Tangled Web UK Review February 2008
The Adversary by
Michael Walters
pbk out March 08
(Quercus)
at £6.99
I guess Michael Walters' knowledge of modern Mongolia comes from his working in the oil industry and as a management consultant across the world. It must still be a relatively impenetrable society, and therefore it is all the more intriguing to be offered the start of a crime series within its borders. My understanding is limited to imagined landscapes of the 12th and 13th century world of Chinghis and Kubilai. Here, we have a landscape populated by families living close to that world, but existing in a society altered by Soviet and Western attitudes.
The story opens with the case against the head of Mongolia's criminal empire, Muunokhoi, falling apart in court. The judge has no option but to throw it out, and Nergui's twenty-year obsession with Muunokhoi is back to square one. Once the head of the Serious Crime Team, Nergui wangles a posting from the Ministry of Security back to the team to run an inquiry into what went wrong, and to winkle out the corruption that is rife. Doripalam, his successor and one-time protégé, is angered by the return of his old boss. But he has already discovered that long-serving cop, Tunjin, is responsible for the collapse of the case. Tunjin has falsified some evidence and has been found out. Now he is suspended, and on the run from Muunokhoi's heavies who wish to enact retribution. Tunjin feels his only way out is to take the initiative and get the goods on Muunokhoi properly.
In the mean time, Doripalam has taken his own protégé, Luvsan, to visit Mrs Tuya who has been causing problems because her son has gone missing. When Doripalam and Luvsan turn up at the family encampment, Tuya is murdered and the rest of the nomadic family have disappeared. The judge in the original case, Radnaa, comes to see Nergui. They know each other from the past – as Sarangarel, Judge Radnaa was the innocent wife of a criminal arrested by Nergui for his association with Muunokhoi. Her husband later died in prison, apparently a suicide, though murder was never ruled out in Nergui's mind. She thinks she is now being watched, and when she is eventually kidnapped, all roads seem to lead to Muunokhoi. Nergui and his team have one last chance to make good.
This is the second in the Nergui series following on from Shadow Walker, in which the murder of a British geologist was seen as the fourth victim of a serial killer. Once more, against the backdrop of a country stranded halfway between a colourful and splendid past and an uncertain future, we see the meticulous and scrupulously honest pair of Nergui and Doripalam strive to find justice in a corrupt system. The dapper and always well-dressed Nergui can irritate his younger colleague with his private excursions into alleyways of the case at hand. But we know they will work in close harmony in the end, and they need to for Muunokhoi would seem to be an adversary who is just a little too relentless and ruthless for even this pair of cops.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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