OK, this is not literary; the prose is workmanlike, the dialogue has lines like, "What?" and "Shit!" But then again it's a book about (and intended to create in the reader) disbelief and shock; a complete page-turner. The first half of the book represents the author's meteoric rise in the land of high finance in Russia, as he makes money hand over fist for the clients of his fund (Hermitage). But the wheels come off when he won't buckle under to the corruption (as in a $230 million fraud) that threatens to wipe out his profits; he and his staff are threatened and, finally, his lawyer is taken into jail and tortured to death. At that point, the book changes gears, and it becomes about Browder's fight to have Sergei Magnitsky's story heard and to have it make a difference. There's sort of a happy ending (SPOILER) in that there is some new accountability, in the form of a law signed into law by Barack Obama, to punish the Russians who perpetrated the crimes; this all takes place on an international stage. I had no idea that Putin's law about Americans not being allowed to adopt Russian orphans derived from this tangle. But if even half of what Browder wrote about Russia, the press, the coverups, and the willful denial and disavowal that happens in that country is true, it reads like 1984 on steroids. I read it in two days.
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