The Siberia Job by Josh Haven
Mysterious Press (June 6, 2023)
384 pages; $26.95 hardcover; $17.49 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
I thought, This is either going to go right over my head, or it’s going to bore me to tears.
Fortunately, thanks to the skilled writing of Josh Haven, The Siberia Job is neither boring or bewildering. Instead, this “lightly fictionalized” account of true events is a taut thrill ride through post-Soviet Russia.
The book opens with two businessmen hatching a plan to make a fortune in Russia’s burgeoning voucher market. As I understand it, vouchers in this instance are like stock, and at this time were plentiful. Their plan is simple: buy up a bunch of vouchers to gain ownership in major Russian companies, and sell them later for profit.
Their first attempt is successful, making them majority shareholders in a Russian cigarette company. They soon discover that the company is also involved in bootlegging many major U.S. cigarette brands, and they have inadvertently entered into business with a segment of the Russian mafia.
Undeterred, the two pursue vouchers in another company — the largest energy company in Russia, no less. They pick up a third partner and spread out to the farthest corners of the country, hitting every fishing village and rural town they can find in an effort to accumulate enough vouchers to gain majority ownership of a billion-dollar business. Their race to the auctions where they can cash these vouchers in becomes a sort of cold war Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as they utilize everything from a dog sled to a tank-for-hire to a knock-off B-52. They manage to anger quite a lot of powerful people along the way, and eventually what starts as the pursuit of easy money becomes a somewhat desperate pursuit of survival.
If you’d like a sample of the story, Haven has penned an article at Crimereads that includes several anecdotes he gathered from the men at the center of the story. These had to be cut from the novel, but they provide a great taste of the larger tale Haven tells in the book.
I can’t say enough about how Haven takes a complex subject and boils it down to a simple premise, then mixes in the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up elements that elevate it to high adventure. Don’t sleep on this one!
