BLOOD AND RUBLES

Watched and helped by Craig Hamilton of the FBI, Chief Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov's overworked squad attacks several hopeless cases. Sasha Tkach is on the trail of the three brothers (ages 11, 9, and 7) who've been robbing and killing passersby. Emil Karpo is determined to punish the gangsters responsible for the death of his lover Mathilde Verson in a murderous crossfire. That leaves two cases for Rostnikov himself: the miraculous disappearance of a treasure-trove of historic artifacts hours after it came to light, and the kidnapping of Alexi Porvinovich, a businessman whose success attracted the wrong kind of interest. The collapse of the centralized Soviet bureaucracy has created chaos for Rostnikov's men, who have to compete with the tax police and the ineradicable KGB successors for clues and bribes in order to bring suspects before the bar of a deeply questionable justice system. It's a situation Kaminsky's tenth Rostnikov novel (Hard Currency, 1995, etc.) exploits brilliantly, showing power up for grabs among both cops and crooks—so that when the mother of the three child killers complains, ``Where are you taking my babies? . . . I have a right to know. This is a democracy now,'' she's told, ``This is a lunatic asylum now.'' The most honored of the three series Kaminsky juggles (along with the Toby Peters and the Abe Lieberman mysteries) has produced another entry worthy of comparison with the very best of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct procedurals.