Symphony of Monsters

Levy (The Heart of Everything) tackles Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine in this affecting thriller about a mother’s desperate search for her missing son. Veronika Khodova serves as the head nurse for a medical clinic in the Ukrainian village of Rykove. Following the Russian assault, she yearns for the Russians who killed some 200 of her neighbors to face justice. Her desire for revenge becomes increasingly personal when her nine-year-old son Valentyn is abducted as part of a sophisticated deportation plot: Putin’s Children’s Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, has established a program aimed at taking 200,000 Ukrainian children to Russia to become Russian Federation citizens, ostensibly in the children’s best interests. Levy details the search for Valentyn from the boy’s perspective, as well as those of his mother and his older sister, Lilya. Along the way, he supplements his suspenseful plot with details ripped from the headlines; at one point, Lvova-Belova notes how the Trump administration’s policy of separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents inspired her scheme. This joins the shelf with Martin Cruz Smith’s Hotel Ukraine as an effective fictional reckoning with the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Agent: Susanna Lee, Susanna Lee Associates. (Jan.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the age of the main character’s son.