What a painful disappointment of a book, somehow simultaneously painfully uninterested in its own ostensible subject matter and yet still breathlessly self-absorbed in its own floridity. Much more fluent when describing the socioeconomic background of the persons involved in the situation than in talking about the investigation into and hunt of a maneating tiger when there are written reports, eyewitness testimonies, and video footage existent–dude, that’s half of the book written for you, you just have to transcribe it–it still finds nothing more to say about Russia that we didn’t already know. IE, it’s cold, bleak, and hopeless. What it has to say about the titular investigation and hunt of the maneating tiger referenced in the very title of the book is precious little–I’d say about 2 paragraphs per chapter, which are then promptly abandoned for lengthy socioeconomic or historical digressions which should serve to advance a nuanced understanding of the history of human settlements in the area, their competition with, and conservation efforts of tigers but end up very much not doing so because the author keeps serially digressing and redigressing with much more enthusiasm about everything and anything other than the investigation into and hunt of a maneating tiger.

DAMN.