Louis Charbonneau's latest thriller is a major development over his previous works, combining the excitement of an international thriller set in the remote eastern portion of Siberia with the magnificence of the Siberian tiger as the centerpiece of the international struggle. In addition to poaching, the tigers' habitat is being threatened by unprecedented logging contracts granted to foreign companies to exploit the fringes of the tigers' preserve, a symptom of post-Communist Russia's desperation to survive. But Russia's past, with its burden of repression and power, as American biologist Chris Harmon discovers, is still very much in the present, and a core of hardline Communists yearn for its return to power.