The Burning Lake by Brent Ghelfi

Published by Poisoned Pen Press on May 3, 2011

The Burning Lake is the fourth in Brent Ghelfi's series of novels featuring Volk, a Russian colonel who dabbles in crime when he isn't doing assignments for "the General" or engaging in personal quests for revenge (which is one of his primary occupations). Revenge drives the plot of The Burning Lake, as Volk investigates the death of a journalist (and former lover) named Kato. Her body is found buried with those of some missing students near the site of a Russian nuclear weapons design facility. It quickly becomes evident that someone killed Kato to prevent a story from breaking. Volk's efforts to track down the story (and thus Kato's killer) take him to Las Vegas (where he reunites with Brock Matthews, a CIA agent who has appeared in each of the previous novels) and to Tijuana, where he meets a former intelligence officer named Stone who now runs a private security firm.

Ghelfi's first Volk novel (Volk's Game) remains my favorite, followed closely by the third (The Venona Cable). The Burning Lake is more tightly plotted than the second novel (Shadow of the Wolf) but fails to develop Volk's character as fully as the first three. In each novel, Volk is filled with internal anguish.  In the first two particularly, Volk questions the beliefs that drove his rather ugly past; in the third, he questions his father's loyalty to Russia. I was disappointed that the storyline in The Burning Lake is more conventional. We still see some of Volk's inner turmoil but the focus is almost entirely on external events rather than Volk's ongoing struggle to confront his past and change his present. Volk does find himself regretting actions that further harmed his troubled relationship with his girlfriend, Valya, but that storyline was less interesting than Volk's remorse over his role in the suppression of Chechen dissent (a primary focus of the first two novels).

Still, the engaging, action-filled story unfolds at a swift pace, the point of view rapidly shifting between Volk and Stone. There is considerably less of the violence and brutality that characterized the first two novels, but no Volk novel would be complete without a certain amount of bloodshed. This novel works well as a stand-alone; Ghelfi presents enough information about Volk's past to help the reader understand his history without slowing the pace with needless exposition. While The Burning Lake isn't my favorite Volk novel (and, in fact, is probably my least favorite), I enjoyed breezing through it. I recommend it to Volk fans and I recommend the series to thriller readers. If you want to understand what makes Volk such an intriguing character, however, it's best to start at the beginning and read them all.

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