Snowdrops

Published: 2011
Author: A.D. Miller

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An atmospheric psychological thriller with Moscow as the main character

The Booker Prize has a reputation for only liking serious literary fiction so it was a pleasant surprise to see A.D. Miller’s crime thriller Snowdrops on the shortlist for this year’s prize.  Was this a welcome sign that the judges were looking beyond their usual scope and taking note of what books the public is reading and enjoying?

Despite its conventional crime thriller beginning, a body found on a city street, this is not your bog-standard murder mystery.  The novel’s name and the first few pages made me think that the book was heading in a typical crime fiction direction.  ‘Snowdrops’ is slang for frozen bodies found on Moscow streets once the winter snow begins to melt, so I was sure that we were going down the serial killer route.  I was very wrong.

The story is told in the first-person by the protagonist, Nick Platt, but the narrative isn’t a straight recollection.  This is a confession by Nick to his un-named fiancee about his time in Moscow and details of the passionate love affair he has.  The little asides in the confession connect the reader to Nick instantly.  We take the place of the fiancee so we know him, he’s not new to us, we have automatic sympathy for his predicament.

Nick is an English lawyer working in Russia for a few years.  One day on the Metro he has a chance meeting with sisters Masha and Katya and falls deeply in love with Masha.  He becomes involved with her family and for a while feels closer to this family than to his own in Luton.  There is a beautiful Christmas Day scene which will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has to suffer festivities with the relatives.  Sub-plots involve his work dealings with a shady businessman known only as ‘The Cossack’ and a neighbour’s increasingly desperate search for a missing friend.

The characters are all cliches.  Nick is a wimp, Masha and Katya are provocative dressers whose motives we never feel entirely sure of, ‘The Cossack’ is a bluff, loud man, of whose impure motives we are always certain. However, the main character is not a person – it’s the city itself.  This book is all about Moscow.

Miller writes beautifully and evocatively about life in the city.  I have never been to Russia but I now have a real feeling for what it must be like.  I could hear the noise, I could smell the streets, taste the food and feel the bitter cold.  The sleazy lapdancing bars came to life and the suspicions and paranoia of people who aren’t entirely free despite the end of communism is utterly believable.

My enjoyment of the story was slightly lessened by the fact I was waiting for another death to take place.  I did keep on reading though – the story was absolutely gripping.  From about three-quarters of the way through until the end I hardly put the book down, I was desperate to know what happened.  It was then that I finally realised that I wasn’t reading a crime story but a well-crafted, thrilling psychological drama.

Snowdrops is a brilliantly assured debut novel by former journalist A.D. Miller.  Don’t pick it up thinking you know what’s going to happen – you’re bound to be very, very wrong.