The Fat of Fed Beasts

Monday lunchtime: a bank is being robbed. Gunmen tell an old man to get down on the floor; he refuses. Behind him in the queue is Rada Kalenkova, an investigator for the Office of Assessment, whose job is to evaluate the lives of the recently deceased. The gang leader fires a shot and one - or two? - women are killed? Perhaps. Rada ignores them and tries to follow the old man instead. Back at the office, her boss calls in the Inquisitor, Lopez, to investigate her misconduct; her ambitious brother, D (for Dmitry), is delighted. But nothing about the robbery or the putative killings make sense. The robbers are police employees inspired by Willie Sutton (who, asked why he robbed banks, never actually said: ‘That’s where the money is.’) The bank manager denis anyone was hurt, and his deputy lets D see the blood stains up the wall. Every enquiry leads towards Edward Likker, a renowned fixer. But Likker is dead - D is writing his assessment - and his lawyer may have cut his own throat with a bread knife. D and Rada don’t do suicides - their own father, who might not have been Russian after all, might have killed himself. Or not. But when their colleague Alex goes to investigate Rodkin’s death, he disappears. And what exactly is Lopez looking for?

The Fat of Fed Beasts is an ambitious literary mix of existential uncertainty, murder, bureaucracy, unreliable father figures and disaffected policemen. It asks why we do what we do, whether it matters, and what, if anything, our lives are worth. And it’s funny.