Ace historian Donald James， who wrote the script for the excellent PBS series Russia s War and whose book The Fall of the Russian Empire is a fine guide to recent past events， projects his expertise into the near future to create a chaotic， completely believable landscape of terror and frustration in this memorable thriller. It s 2015， and Russia--racked by civil wars since the fall of the Yeltsin government and its short-lived liberal successors--is under the strong grip of leader Leonid Koba. A melancholy， alcoholic (are there any other kind?)， provincial policeman named Vadim is shipped from Murmansk to a bombed-out district of Moscow， ostensibly to investigate the brutal murders of women credited to a demonlike killer called the Monstrum. But what the people in power really want from the increasingly desperate Vadim is something completely different--his resemblance to Koba and his connection to the woman who led the defeated rebels.