Charlie Doig's thirst for revenge impels him into the chaotic depths of a dying White Russia as he chases, in an armored locomotive, after Glebov, Bolshavik and killer of Doig's beautiful wife, Elizaveta, and the rest of his family at the Pink House, in James Fleming's unusual historical thriller Cold Blood.
Cold Blood's first person point of view gives the thriller an immediacy that brings alive the chaotic time of the Russian Revolution. One particularly haunting and beautiful piece of writing comes when Doig and Joseph, his uncle's house steward at the Rykov palace, walk through the eerily silent, misty streets of St. Petersburg one October night on their way to a Lenin rally, where they hope to kill Glebov. As they walk, a trumpet sounds. At first they think that it heralds a Bolshevik battalion, but it is but a lone fanfare to the dying past. Suddenly, a truck filled with Bolsheviks appears out of the fog and Doig and Joseph barely manage to escape with their lives. When they finally make it to the Smolny palace, it is a striking image, a lone building illuminated by electrical lights, a “battleship paying the country a state visit...”
Doig makes his way into the hornet's nest of Bolsheviks, disguised as a mushroom seller, even coming face-to-face with Lenin himself. He eventually spots Glebov, standing himself some 30 feet from the man he despises. Alas, he cannot take his nemesis then and there but must escape before Glebov spots him. In another thriller a conflict or a chase ensues as two enemies come within so close a proximity. But all we get here is a disappointment rather than a confrontation or even the beginning of a chase. And so the novel suffers from a plot hampered by the lack of muscular opposition to Doig's quest for revenge.
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