I found the premise fascinating: a Finn becomes the handpicked detective of the last Russian Tsar, is then sent to the gulag by the new Soviet regime, only to be reinstated as the handpicked detective of Joseph Stalin. This, from 2014, appears to be the fifth in the series but I had no problem starting here.
Inspector Pekkala, the legendary Emerald Eye, has gone missing. The general view in Moscow is that he has died, but neither Stalin nor Pekkala's close friend and assistant Major Kirov believe it, Meanwhile it is 1944 and Russia is chasing the Germans out of Ukraine. This is where Pekkala was last seen. Stalin dispatches Kirov with unlimited authority to find him.
At the same time Stalin is planning to exterminate the various partisan groups or atrads who are squabbling over the future of Ukraine. These are the same groups Kirov now has to work with, and include the group who, it comes as no surprise, Pekkala has been hiding amongst.
There is also a mysterious killer - the titular beast - who is brutally murdering Germans and Russians. He very nearly kills Kirov. Once Kirov and Pekkala are reunited, finding and stopping the killer becomes their mission.
Eastland reveals his identity in a roundabout way. We are given, without explanation to begin with, documents concerning an American citizen who in the height of the US Depression in the Thirties has emigrated to Russia with his family to work at the Ford factory in Nizhni-Novgorod. He reports that everything is fine to begin with, a worker's paradise. But then, it seems, something goes wrong...
Once we discover who the killer is, he tells us (a stroke of pure novelistic brilliance, I thought) that he is not the only killer on the prowl, and Pekkala is launched on a last-minute race to stop the other.
It's a fabulously entertaining mix of wheels within wheels, spies and double agents, set in a unique time and place, and peppered with idiosyncratic and highly individual secondary characters as well as real historical figures. Absolutely to my taste. I'm hooked on another series!
