I tried several times to read this book, and not only was it not interesting it was violent and gruesome. This is not entertainment.

The Dissident reads like a Dostoevsky novel full of reflective twists and turns, taking the reader deep into the interior folds of characters' minds. And like Russian novels of the 19th and mid-20th century, it is dark, brooding, serious like a coronary. The decade is the 1970s, long after Stalin, but the mood of fear remains; for some of the characters in The Dissident there is almost a longing for the same intensity as that might give life some kind of task, some of kind of reason for the ennui and lack of fulfillment. Indeed, the novel revolves around a mysterious -- possibly politically motivated double murder -- and the primary protagonist's floundering sense of belonging in Moscow.

The novel's story is both a mystery and a treatise on political philosophy. This is a historian's historical fiction! Goldberg's prose reveals an intimate knowledge of Russian Soviet history and culture: many lines are delivered in Cyrillic Russian, there is a presumption of intimacy with Russian literature and cultural concepts on the part of the author. At times, character's devolvement into the past distracts from the story arc, yet simultaneously, this is expected in a character-driven literary fiction with this sort of Russian flavor. The result is a refined -- and intensive! -- weave of the two genres into a single fabric.

Viktor Moroz is a young Russian Jew in the 1970s, which means he knows he’s a Jew but doesn’t know much of anything about the religion or its traditions. Still, he throws himself in with a group of dissidents, particularly so-called “refuseniks,” those Jews who have been denied applications to leave the country. Refuseniks usually were fired from their jobs and then punished for being parasites, one of the many classic absurdities of the Soviet state.

On the night Viktor is trying to marry his girlfriend Oksana in a Jewish ceremony—which requires the presence of a fellow dissident, Schwartz, and a collection of old men Schwartz has promised to bring along because they know the old rituals—Viktor discovers that Schwartz has been ax-murdered, along with Foxman, an American with CIA connections. Like any rational Soviet citizen, Viktor flees the scene but has been spotted by the KGB. His oddly cordial interrogator (or “curator” as she insists she should be known), Lydia Ivanovna, offers him a deal: (A) Solve the murders before Henry Kissinger’s Moscow visit in a week, and Viktor and Oksana will be allowed to leave the USSR, or (B) Don’t solve the murders and be put on trial himself.

This is an off-kilter novel populated with all kinds of misfits connected to the dissident community, including a Jewish Russian Orthodox priest and “Mad Dog” Dymshitz, an American newspaperman stationed in Moscow. While Viktor is unsure what to do, Oksana is full steam ahead. And when Mad Dog’s father, Norm, comes to town, things really start happening. This is to be expected, considering Norm escaped from Sobibor during the Holocaust and spent the rest of the war as a partisan fighter, becoming an expert in sneak attacks on Nazis. He’s not fazed by an unknown ax murderer on one side and the KGB on the other.

This novel’s setup reminds me of David Benioff’s City of Thieves, set during World War II, in which a Red Army deserter and a young thief are given a brief period to find a dozen eggs for a colonel’s daughter’s wedding cake or, failing that, to be executed. Both books are funny, scary and thrilling, as Soviet man comes up against the impossible and ludicrous demands of the Soviet state. This book adds in the machinations of US government as well, in the person of Henry Kissinger.

In The Dissident, Paul Goldberg presents a thrilling and witty Cold War mystery that follows Viktor Moroz, a Jewish refusenik in Moscow, as he is caught up in a murder investigation. On his wedding day, Viktor stumbles upon the ax murder of two gay men, one of them a US official, and is subsequently targeted by the KGB. With just nine days to solve the case before Henry Kissinger arrives in Moscow, Viktor must navigate the complex world of Moscow's refusenik community and confront his own difficult choices and monumental consequences. Along the way, he is aided by a group of equally ragtag and resourceful characters, including his wife, a hard-drinking sculptor, and a Russian priest of Jewish heritage. The Dissident is a clever and immersive Cold War thriller that will keep readers guessing until the very end.