An Autumn Hunting (Inspector Akyl Borubaev 4)

Travel Guide

Kyrgyzstan

The country of Kyrgyzstan provides one of the most fascinating landscapes in crime and spy fiction. When you think about the political and socio-political landscape and not just the physical landscape, it’s fitting and bleak on all sides.

The country is one riddled with poverty and social depravation of all levels.

Oh and the vast, rural and unfriendly parts of this country represent the corruption which seems to run through the thread of the story set here.

“Once Kyrgyzstan got its independence a lot of Russians decided there’d be better pickings back in Moscow or St Petersburg or Novosibirsk. And since, crime, just as much nature , abhors a vacuum, the local element quickly rose to the top, did their best to make sure they stayed there”

Bangkok

From a vast and remote country to one pulsing with tension and chaos. Bangkok,where Borubaev heads to later on in the book is a city to watch out for. There are signs of wealth everywhere here but behind the flashing lights, there’s a deep seated layer of poverty and corruption not unlike that of Kyrgyzstan.

A fascinating city on every level. Both very different cities and countries but the differences of these two also reveal the similarities.  Human abuse, corruption and exploitation are evil wherever they originate from and wherever they scar the landscape.