The Milkman In The Night

The Milkman In The Night

AS the frozen city of Kiev waits anxiously for a late-coming spring, a pharmacist is murdered in the street. A young mother boards a mini-bus to a breast milk clinic. An airport warden’s dog discovers a suitcase full of mysterious ampoules. And a security guard returns home with a blood-stained shirt and no recollection of his night-time activities.

The separate storylines of these characters and their relatives twine into a bizarre quasi-murder mystery, featuring anti-fear medicine, human milk used as youth serum, sleepwalking intrigue, corpse embalming, a cat that comes back from the dead and shady government practices.

Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov’s debut translated novel, Death And The Penguin, was critically acclaimed, and his seventh is part thriller, part character study.

His direct, unfussy narration is drenched in post-Soviet pessimism and alcohol, and although the plot takes a while to gain momentum, readers trying to second-guess future twists will be astonished.