The hero of my series, Senior Investigator Natalya Ivanova, lives in Vladimir Putin’s birthplace of Saint Petersburg (actually there is some doubt that Putin was even born a Russian citizen, but that’s another story). After spending her teenage years in Germany, Natalya has become an idealist, a European liberal who refuses to adapt to morally grey Russia; something that isn’t a problem for her pragmatic husband Mikhail, a more senior officer in the Criminal Investigations Directorate.
MOTHERLAND, the first in the series, begins with a disillusioned Natalya working on domestic violence cases, knowing only the very worst offenders will ever be prosecuted. When a Swedish student goes missing, she responds enthusiastically, seeing an opportunity to escape from her usual caseload and run a major investigation. The theme of MOTHERLAND, though, is of corruption. Webster’s dictionary describes it as powerful people engaging in illegal or dishonest behaviour, but there’s an older sense too, of corruption as an agent of decay. And while Natalya wants to be an idealist fighting the corrupt elite of the Russian establishment, the decay leaves no one untouched, not even an investigator and her family.
When a young woman’s half-frozen body is found by a road in BLACK WOLF, and the woman turns out to be a member of the Decembrists – a secretive group of anti-government activists – Natalya’s idealism goes into hyperdrive, realising she has more in common with the victim than her own colleagues. After being removed from the case, she refuses to stop. As for the black wolf of the title, that’s Natalya. In this exchange with her superior, Lieutenant Colonel Dostoynov, he forces her to confront the darker origins of her idealism.
Dostoynov chuckled. ‘Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard of a black wolf, Ivanova?’ ‘No, Colonel.’ ‘It’s a mutation caused by wolves mating with dogs in the distant past. Black wolves are outcasts, destined to be neither one thing nor the other. The wolves in their pack attack them for being different and they are shot for their trouble when seeking human company. That’s you, Ivanova. The Decembrists don’t trust you, and neither do we.’ ‘Yes, Colonel.’ ‘The interesting point though, Ivanova, is that despite outward appearances there is little difference between a black wolf and a grey – merely a few genes for the colour of the pelt. As for you, there is no record of you attending anti-government demonstrations or joining political groups. You rail against corruption, while married to an officer under investigation, and you live in an apartment beyond both of your means. Do you know what I think?’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ ‘There you are again with your little quips. I’ll tell you though, because it’s clear to anyone who looks at your file. Your rebellion started when your parents divorced. You were a resentful teenager who listened to punk long after it was fashionable. You hated your mother for bringing you back to Piter, and your father and sister for letting her. You think you’re fighting the Russian state, but you’re fighting your family.’
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