I wanted to like this book more than I did. The other Malcom Knox book I’ve read, Bluebird, I really loved and in the beginning I thought this one was going to work too. But maybe because I’d recently rewatched The Death of Stalin, this fell flat. Similar absurdist humour (except with Australian flavoured swearing) set in the Stalinist era, in this case 1938, before Beria has moved on to Moscow. After a while it just became a trial for me to keep reading and I found myself skipping bits. So disappointing.

A dark, speculative tale featuring one of the 20th Century's lesser-known (at least, here in the West) monsters, Malcolm Knox's latest novel is one that I enjoyed 90% of the time (wink, wink). I'm looking forward to hearing Knox speak about it on the publicity trail in coming months, to get to the bottom of why this contemporary Australian journalist and novelist felt compelled to bring this particular story into the world.

Lavrentiy Beria. It's a name that meant nothing to me until last year when I read The Eighth Life. The funny thing is - he was never named in that novel! But it didn't take a lot of effort to discover the identity of the influential murderous rapist who loomed large in that story. Knox, however, has no compunction about both naming and providing certain details of the man's notoriety as a counterpoint to his more sympathetic, fictional character of Vasil Murtov. Here's how it goes: Beria's impoverished, widowed mother sells the family home to pay Murtov's family to adopt Beria as a school-aged child. Beria's not particularly grateful to be taken in and provided with opportunities. Instead, he forges his own path, until in 1938 - the time of this story - he is Governor of Georgia. Murtov, his oldest friend (and let's not forget, his adoptive brother), is an Assistant Secretary of the Communist Party, and his day-to-day role is to work as Beria's personal driver.

So, it's 1938 and the rumour mill indicates that The Steel One is planning a long-awaited, official return visit to his homeland of Georgia. Beria immediately starts the wheels spinning to prepare for the most perfect, lavish event, that will help to propel his own career to greater heights. But with less than 40 days to get it done, he can't afford for anything to go wrong, or for the Party machinations to get in the way. He's relying on Murtov, his first friend, to help pull off the coup of a lifetime.

As I said, I mostly 'enjoyed' this. It had moments of levity, but also scenes of utter brutality that were a little difficult to stomach. But this is not a fairy tale, and Beria's exploits shouldn't be blunted or overlooked. Murtov was a well-rounded character and I honestly wasn't sure how things were going to end up for him and his family. There were parts of the story where the pacing felt a bit off, but the final 20-25% had me feverishly turning the pages to see what would happen. A thriller in the most literal sense.

Australian journalist and writer Malcolm Knox takes on some tough subject matter in his latest novel The First Friend. The book is pitched as a dark comedy and has some of the hallmarks of satire but its subject matter - Soviet spymaster Lavrentyi Beria is possible too evil a person to warrant this treatment.
The action of The First Friend is all based around a visit by Stalin to Gerogia in 1938. At that time Beria was Governor or Georgia and two other states but was looking for more advancement (he would go on to head the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB). The book is told from the perspective of Vasil Murtov, a childhood friend of Beria's and now one of his right hand men. Readers will know from the beginning that Murtov is slated to die and each flashback section counts down to his demise, casting a bit of a pall over all of his efforts to avoid just that fate. Beria himself was a reprehensible human being - a thug, a murderer and a paedophile - and he surrounds himself with flunkies and yes men. So it is hard to develop any sympathy for Murtov who is one of the facilitators of this behaviour.
In an age of autocracts it is not hard to see the parallels that Knox is trying to draw - Xi, Trump, Putin - all act in very similar ways to their historical Soviet counterparts. Essentially running government as if it was an organised criminal enterprise. There are also interesting parallels between the puritanical 'posts', the children of the revolution and the ageing party members (the 'pres') and what is happening at the moment on the American far-right.
But just becuase these resonances can be drawn does not mean that readers will want to get into the mud with peope like Beria and those who enabled him. Some actions, some characters, some situations, cannot be made more palatable because there is an air of satire around them. Lavrentyi Beria is one of those characters.