Millennial Moscow's dirty secrets

An expat in Moscow slips into the moral void of post-Communist Russia where seemingly anything is possible, and allowed

Snowdrop, in Moscow slang, is a corpse that lies buried or hidden in the winter snows, emerging only in the thaw. With this ominous nugget of information on the opening page of Snowdrops, AD Miller sets the tone for a dramatic story that unfolds in 21st century Russia. A far cry from the world of Leo Tolstoy, this is a Russia where, as one character puts it, "there are no business stories. And there are no politics stories. There are no love stories. There are only crime stories". In wintry Moscow, British lawyer Nick Platt meets 20-somethings Masha and Katya, exotic, discontent and ambitious; and Tatiana, an elderly babushka, who made skis out of bark as a child and lived through Leningrad. The girls crave a better future while the woman yearns to return to the idyll of her past. They represent the Russia that was and the one that it has become; the nostalgia and the allure; and, as the winter progresses, Nick is seduced by one and compromises the other. There are parallel narratives — a huge deal that Nick is putting together for his law firm with a man simply known as 'The Cossack', and the mysterious disappearance of Nick's neighbour's friend. And you know that when winter ends, the thawing snow will reveal Moscow's dirty secrets. This is not a story of suspense. You have an idea of the end, but there is curiosity on how it will come about. Miller's tone is honest and dryly amused: "Money in Moscow had its own peculiar habits. Money knew that someone in the Kremlin might decide to take it back at any moment. It didn't relax over coffee or promenade with three-wheeled buggies in Hyde Park like London money does. Moscow money emigrated to the Cayman islands, villas on Cap Ferrat or anywhere else that would give it a warm home and ask no questions. Or it combusted itself as conspicuously as possible, poured itself into champagne jacuzzis and took flight in private helicopters." And, it is to his credit that things unravel at a tremendous pace, giving you a vivid picture of the expat view of Russia, of strip clubs with painted dancers, planes that "smell of sweat and cognac", and gangsters with fur hats made of endangered animals, along with observations that are often filled with casual generalisations: "The Russians will do the impossible thing: the thing you think they can't do, the things you haven't even thought of. They will set fire to Moscow when the French are coming or poison each other in foreign cities. They will do it, and afterwards they will behave as if nothing has happened at all. And if you stay in Russia long enough, so will you." There are times when the writer takes the stereotypes too far — The Cossack is a caricature, like the Russian villains in '90s Hollywood movies, and Masha is too much of a calculating seductress to justify Nick's infatuation with her. But it's all still deliciously immoral and fascinatingly decadent. It is only when the story is hurtling towards its predictable end that it hits one stumbling block, and that is in the protagonist himself. Yes, Nick is adrift and is in a moral downward spiral, but it isn't entirely believable that he could deliberately allow himself to get caught up in the events. He makes his excuses to us — and to his future wife to whom he is telling this story — but he isn't convincing. Does it matter? Probably not. When the snow thaws and a body is found, who cares what happened.