"ROSTNIKOV'S VACATION BY STUART M. KAMINSKY, UNABRIDGED 6 AUDIO CASSETTES, 8.5 HOURS, NARRATED BY MARK HAMMER: Rostnikov strokes his bum leg and watches bathers brave the Black Sea's frigid, polluted waters for an afternoon swim. Rostnikov turns the pages of a tattered American paperback mystery and hears the waves strike with aggravating predictability against the shore. Rostnikov sips afternoon tea, speaks quietly to his wife, Sarah, and occasionally glances up at the green and dun colors of the sea. Rostnikov is on vacation, and all this rest and relaxation is making him more tired than if he had spent all night interrogating a murderer. Then Georgi Vasilievich, an old colleague, shows up at the Lermontov Hotel where Rostnikov is staying, and the two renew their friendship, one that appears to comfort the aging and despondent Vasillievich. But their renewed association comes to a quick end when Georgi is found dead on his deck chair facing the sea. The coroner says it was a heart attack, but Rostnikov knows better. Why was there dirt on Georgi's hand and why was the knuckle of his middle finger broken? Someone had murdered his friend, and figured that beacuse Vasilievich was a lonely old man no one would care. Well, that someone figured wrong. As Rostnikov investigates the murder, two of his partners, Emil Karpo and Sasha Tkach, pursue some trails of their own: Sasha investigates a string of computer thefts, all of them owned by Jews who have been bearing the brunt for the country's economic troubles, and Karpo tracks a psychotic killer bent on political assassination. All three men are led to a final confrontation in Soviet Square, game pieces in a country where everything and nothing has changed. As with Kaminsky's other mysteries, among them the Edgar award winning A Cold Red Sunrise, the author captures life in an evolving Russia, and in Rostnikov, the character of a nation: powerful yet wounded, dignified yet laced with sadness, desperate yet... [from case]