Licence to kill | 12 January 2017

As I read the last chapter of this book, news broke that the Russian ambassador to Ankara, Andrey Karlov, had been shot multiple times at close range by an off-duty Turkish police officer. Despite shocking live footage of the incident, it was unclear immediately whether this was political assassination or terrorist attack, or who was ultimately behind it. The assassin was quickly ‘neutralised’. Speaking from the Kremlin, Putin praised the slain ambassador, ordered security at Russian embassies to be stepped up, and said he wanted to know who had ‘directed’ the gunman’s hand. This is the crucial question. Not who the killer was, but for whom he was acting and with what intent.

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In The Man with the Poison Gun, the assassin — Bogdan Stashinsky — is named in the prologue, where the author, Serhii Plokhy, presents the main event in rather clinical prose. Stashinsky, around whose murderous actions the book pivots, is arguably just an extension of his fascinating weapon, directed by decision-makers elsewhere. Despite some pleasing details (cyanide smuggled across borders as tinned Frankfurt sausages, a dissected brain giving off a whiff of almonds) this gives the first act of the book, Stashinsky’s recruitment, training and operations, a surprising lack of tension. With limited insight into the assassin’s character, it is hard to feel empathy when he has qualms of conscience, or engagement as he accepts his tasks against his better judgment.

Things get more gripping as doubts set in, nurtured by Stashinky’s East German girlfriend, Inge Pohl, who is unimpressed by the Soviet system. Their defection is given added excitement by the coincidence of the East-West borders closing behind them, and then the Americans refusing to believe him. But the book’s greatest set piece comes with the courtroom drama, supported by the powerful testimony quoted throughout.