Snowdrops" by A.D. Miller
A first novel by someone who studied literature at Cambridge and Princeton and who writes for The Economist. He was the magazine's Moscow correspondent from 2004-2007, travelling widely across Russia and the former Soviet Union.
While it has been called a "thriller" it's really more of a subtle slow moving mystery where the reader gets a wonderful picture of modern Russia with all its decadence and corruption. Quite fascinating.
And I did love an old babusha's comment that "while she minded that the people in charge spent half their time stealing, there was no real point in putting new people in the Kremlin, because they'd just start stealing all over again. And at least the ones in there now were already rich, so they could afford to think about other things too sometimes."
A good read.
