At the heart of AK Shevchenko's debut novel Bequest is a ancient and beguiling tale: the legend of the Cossack gold. The story runs that in the eighteenth century a Cossack warrior and nobleman deposited his wealth in the Bank of England to safeguard it for the future of his family and his nation, Ukraine. It is a legend or myth that has endured over the centuries, promising unimaginable wealth for Ukraine and for the adventurer who secures its release.
And as such it is fabulous raw material for a novel: a rich, mysterious story spanning several centuries. Shevchenko adds layers upon it including a modern love story and a Russian spy desperate to make his name in the modern secret service by foiling the search for treasure that would have the potential to liberate Ukraine from Russian economic and political control.
It is an ambitious undertaking, not least because the setting up of the story covers two threads in the present day as well as trips back to 1941, 1962, 1748 and 1922. Ultimately, this was too much for me and I found it difficult to keep track of a story that struggled to generate momentum. (I should point out that I am not generally a big fan of books that operate on multiple time lines).
Only when the book moved into its second half did the plot settle down sufficiently for the narrative to take a grip - before eventually speeding towards a dramatic conclusion - and once it did I was pleased to have stayed with it. Shevchenko's passion for the story began to shine through as did her obvious flair for story-telling.
I also enjoyed her major characters - Kate, the young London solicitor hired by a fellow member of the Ukrainian diaspora to track down the documentation required to find the gold, and Taras, the young KGB researcher whose career is hamstrung by his Ukrainian background now that Russia and Ukraine find themselves at odds. Neither ever behaves in quite the way I expected and that was pleasingly unsettling.
My misgivings about the structure aside, this was a promising debut and I hope that Shevchenko is sitting on a treasure chest of stories from the land of her fathers - or indeed anywhere else.
