Vice: I Drink, Therefore

The sinewy plot never slackens, but what makes the book memorable are the vividly observed backgrounds—crumbling, haunted urban Moscow and a deserted hinterland that can swallow men up. No less authentic are the fragmented but undead relics of the old Soviet system, not least the secret police, which has kept reincarnating itself, as the Cheka, the OGPU, the NKVD, the KGB, and now the SVR (spies) and the FSB (internal security). Looming like an iceberg are the archives, now in theory open for inspection but in fact mainly still censored or locked away.

Mr. Lejeune is NR’s London correspondent.