Tolya's friendship with the prostitute Lena - his 'bodyguard angel' who pops round occasionally with champagne and salami - is enough to make him regret the plan, and he hires a puffy-faced veteran of the Afghan war to thwart his intended assassination. (Kurkov's novel was itself filmed in 1997, as A Friend of the Deceased.) There is also more than a nod to Raskolnikov's feverishly brewed, instantly regretted plan in Crime and Punishment, the despair alleviated by a redemptive tart. The plot may seem familiar - Finnish film-maker Aki Kaurismaki had the suicidal hero of I Hired a Contract Killer (1990) reassess his scheme when he fell for Margi Clarke. In despair and a grumpy attempt to make a posthumous mark, he hires a hit-man to bump him off in a café on Fraternal Square. When Tolya protests that he enjoys life, the best example he can give is furtively eyeing up the tarts on Kreshchatick Street. He and his unfaithful wife occupy a dank matrimonial sulk in a one-room flat on the seventh floor. Tolya surveys a grey life - neither work, love nor the weather add much lustre. A Matter of Death and Life was originally published in 1996, and it has a neat conceit. Despite its seemingly simple premise, the novel suffers from an uncoordinated plot and an awkward translation: 'Viktor was struck by one full-face portrait showing scar and broken nose to maximum advantage, with the plus of an animal-at-bay expression much at variance with the smug Hollywood smile of the airbrush portrait.' Readers should be prepared for confusion.Harvill arguably do their author few favours by pushing his back catalogue. However, his journey to find Misha becomes a burdensome trudge as Kurkov piles on muddled events and an unmanageable cast of characters. Whether disguised as Bronikovsky, dealing with a Chechen warlord, or rigging elections for a corrupt politician, Victor constantly longs for Misha. At the behest of ailing Muscovite Bronikovsky, heartbroken Viktor leaves the Drake Passage and returns to Kiev, where, under an assumed identity, he becomes involved in a hodge-podge of shady dealings.

In this supersonically-paced, but ultimately tedious sequel to Death and the Penguin, Viktor Zolotaryov searches for his beloved missing penguin Misha.

Penguin Lost by Andrey Kurkov