The Siberia Job by Josh Haven Book Review!

After the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly-established Russian government privatized its industry by issuing vouchers to all of its citizens, allowing them the chance to be shareholders in the country’s burgeoning businesses. The slips are distributed among the population and auctions are arranged where they can be exchanged for actual shares. For the country’s rural populations living in abject poverty, the vouchers appear to be little more than pieces of paper, totally separated from the far-off concept of potential future fortunes. 

But for Texas businessman John Mills and his Czech companion, Petr Kovac, the seemingly-valueless chits suggest a lucrative potential, worth much more than what the current owners are willing to sell them for. They travel all over the country to acquire vouchers for the country’s national oil company, Gazneft, roving from town to town with suitcases full of cash. But they quickly learn that the plan has complications.  The auctions at which these vouchers are traded for actual shares have been planned at the most remote, inaccessible locations possible to deter outsiders from buying in. And when the Russian mafia and the oligarchs in charge of Gazneft catch wind of their successes, the stakes become suddenly more deadly.

About Josh Haven Before publishing his first novel, Josh Haven was an art critic for magazines & newspapers in the US & Europe and an astrogeophysicist who solved the Saturn-Hyperion density/porosity problem. His seafaring adventure novels are published under the name J.H. Gelernter, and Fake Money, Blue Smoke was his first crime novel. His second novel, The Siberia Job , is forthcoming from The Mysterious Press in June 2023.  He lives in Florida.

Links:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Mysterious Press

My Thoughts

I am not much of a fan of anything to do with Russia but let me tell you, this book piqued my interest from page one. Written based on true events. The book starts in 1994, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia started handing out vouchers to the people so they could have shares in businesses, particularly oil companies.  Some people had no desire to have these vouchers as they felt cash was a better option for them.

So we have John Mills, an American from Texas and Petr Kovac, a Czech seemingly meet out of the blue. They devise a plan to cash in on these vouchers. They hire a woman, Anna to be their translator. The three of them go around remote Russia, Siberia in fact, with lots of money that they had gotten from investors, and buy up the vouchers. There are auctions held in the remotest parts of Russia but the people from the companies (Gaxneft to be exact) do not want them to purchase these vouchers so they find ways to stop them.

Thus starts the madcap adventure of the two men and Anna trying to get to the auctions without getting killed and robbed in the process. They are stopped at every turn. Their modes of transport are hilarious, old planes, clunky cars/taxis, tanks, and even sleds with dogs. Each one of these transportation modes has its own story. Do they make it safe and sound? Oh, I am not going to tell you that. You have to read it for yourself. All I will say again is that it is based on true events.

This is a really interesting story and I really enjoyed it, if I could give it more than 5 stars, I would, but 5 stars it is!