This book is indeed far better than the Martin Cruz Smith book of the same title. I read this once a few years ago and although I lost the book the story has stayed with me ever since. I'll be sure to try to get another copy now that Amazon.com finally lists it.

Red Square is in the same genre as 'Fatherland' - if you liked that book, you'll love this one.

When police investigators probing the supposed suicide of a deputy minister uncover evidence of massive corruption, they suddenly find themselves well out of their depth as the Kremlin elite decides to strike back to erase all evidence of its skulduggery. The authors, both of whom were born in the Soviet Union and know it inside out, use a real incident to build up a gripping picture of quite how dissolute Moscow was in the 1980s. Anyone who enjoyed Gorky Park should buy this book, which is much better

Neznansky and Topol, fresh from the triumph of Red Square, produce another cracking Soviet-era thriller set in 1979, the height of the Brezhnevite stagnation. A small team of police investigators probing the disappearance of a journalist stumble across evidence of a huge drug smuggling ring based in Azerbaijan. The atmospherics are superb and every page reeks superbly of authentic corruption. A must-read

This is an outstanding story, with rich characterizations, suspense, and yet it is vibrantly romantic and erotic. The writing is superb. I found myself outraged at the indignities suffered by Jews in the 1970's Soviet Union; tormented within their own country but not permitted to leave. There is an historical thread woven throughout the trials of the main characters. This book is strongly recommended.

An elegant description of the defeat suffered both by the KGB and the CIA brought about by a Russian immigrant. A Russian immigrant sent to Soviet Union to trade places with Soviet member of the General Staff. Everyhting goes worng, but the immigrant goes trhough hell to get his beloved woman out of the GULag.

Right from the start, Topol just couldn't stop making me laugh. His reasoning behind writing the book is exactly why I wanted to read it-to break down that barrier that exists between classroom languages and the reality. Because I want to communicate with people my own age when I go to Russia, I know that theyre not going to speak all prim and proper-I know I don't speak English that way! While decency would prevent me from saying many things, also for fear of my own life, it's great to have the vocab as well as to teach it to English speaking friends so that together, you can pretend to compliment people in a language they don't understand. The only downside to the book is that to seriously learn it all takes a major effort and many of the words are quite difficult to get your tongue around, even if you do speak some Russian.

Dermo! is not just a list of "dirty words" and their translations; it is a peek into Russians' everyday life and culture.

Organized by category [rather than alphabetically], the reader is taken through the basics of everyday slang, anatomy and physiology, and (of course) curses, oaths, and exclamations. The Russian words and phrases are in Cyrillic, with English phonetic pronunciation (helpful if you're learning "conversational" Russian and aren't up on reading it just yet). A great deal of supplemental info is included (such as history behind expressions, just *how* vulgar is a word, etc.), but not so much that it becomes tedious.

I highly recommend Dermo! to anyone who will be dealing with actual, living & breathing Russians. As a colleague who teaches Russian (and recommends this book to her students) told me, "You will never understand Russians until you learn to curse -- at least a little."

I really like this book in spite of it's few shortcomings. Like at least one other reviewer, I would rather not see the transliterated captions with the cartoons, and I could use stress marks on the cyrillic words, but it's still a great book! It's really entertaining and interesting. Certainly not for children, and no, I wouldn't get carried away trying to use many of these words and phrases with Russian people I didn't know very well. But hey, what a hoot around non Russian speaking people! You will have a new-found "freedom of speech".

I was a little put off by some of what I am assuming is the translation errors. Other then that the book was interesting, teaching me about a part of the world and people I did not know much about. I was also interested to see a Russian perspective of the pipeline that the Reagan administration tried so hard to stop in real life. The characters are not the stereotypical you would think, but that is probably due to the nationality of the author. This is a good little book that delivers good entertainment. The story line, which is used a lot in American books, is placed in a new location so that it comes off as being a unique thriller.

Topol, who co-authored the superb Red Square, shows he is no slouch on his own with this intriguing thriller set in the days running up to the December 1984 opening of a pipeline destined to pump gas from the Soviet Arctic to Western Europe. A series of nasty murders threatens to scupper the opening ceremony and panic sweeps through the region amidst rumours that the angry spirits of the local nomadic Nenets people are taking their revenge for the destruction of their traditional homeland by the oil and gas industry. The book is sometimes marred by some rough and ready translation from the Russian (and some abominable proof-reading) but is a must-read. I waited 10 years to find my copy and it was worth every second