Maskirovka by Willi Pochinov - REVIEW
Some thrillers swagger in with noise and spectacle. Maskirovka does the opposite: it slips in quietly, smiling politely, and before you realise what’s happening, you’ve been pulled into a web of deceit, theatre, misdirection, and national-scale chaos. Willi Pochinov’s debut novel is an audacious, gleefully crafted labyrinth of trickery—fitting, given its title refers to the Russian doctrine of deception—and it is written with the confidence of an author who has lived long enough, and widely enough, to understand the strangeness of human behaviour on every rung of society.
From the very first chapter, Pochinov signals that this is not a straightforward military thriller, nor a satire, nor a comic romp—although it contains the DNA of all three. Instead, he orchestrates a careful dance between genres, leaving the reader perpetually unsure whether they should be bracing for violence, cracking a smile, or questioning their own assumptions. It’s a tight balancing act, and one of the book’s greatest strengths is how effortlessly it sustains that tonal ambiguity.
At the centre of it all stands Captain Edward van der Velde, a man whose sense of duty is both his armour and his Achilles heel. Pochinov resists the temptation to draw him as a conventional action hero. Edward is competent, determined, slightly battered by life, and deeply human—an ex–young offender who rebuilt himself through the Army and now finds himself deployed to Thetford Forest on the basis of vague intelligence and a sealed envelope he’s forbidden to open. By grounding Edward’s backstory in grit rather than glamour, Pochinov achieves something uncommon in thrillers: a protagonist whose moral centre feels earned rather than assumed.
When reports of Russian tanks landing on the Suffolk coast begin to trickle in, the reader feels the same disorientation Edward does. The eyewitness accounts are both credible and absurd; the danger is both immediate and faintly theatrical. Pochinov understands that the most unsettling crises are not the explosive ones, but the ones that feel just slightly… off. And so Edward moves with the gravity of someone acting on limited information, performing the oldest soldier’s calculation: better to take action and be wrong than freeze and be too late. The consequences of this decision drive the novel’s early momentum—and the tension is heightened by Pochinov’s gentle refusal to let the reader fully trust what they’re seeing.
One of the hallmarks of Pochinov’s writing is his capacity for character-driven humour that never undermines the stakes. The platoon on the Orwell Bridge, armed with Javelins and jittery anticipation, feels authentically military: stoic, irreverent, superstitious, and braced for glory. The dialogue snaps with realism, and the gallows humour rings true. Yet for all the laughter, the danger is neither dismissed nor diluted. The “invasion” may be questionable, but the possibility of catastrophe is not.
Against this landscape of confusion and adrenaline, Pochinov introduces one of the novel’s most delightful wild cards: Boo, a charismatic eco-activist whose followers are equal parts enthusiastic and hapless. Their sugar-and-mines operation is both hilarious and faintly menacing—a perfect encapsulation of the novel’s central theme: the line between activism, theatre, and threat is thinner than we like to believe. Boo herself is an irresistible character: clever, reckless, commanding, and, beneath the bravado, surprisingly self-aware. Her interactions with Edward—some flirtatious, some confrontational, all unsettling—add a delicious unpredictability to the plot.
And then, of course, there is the milk tanker scene. It is pure Pochinov: cinematic, absurd, and tense all at once. The image of a tanker deliberately upended across a bridge—part obstacle, part stage prop—could have come from an Ealing comedy if not for the deadly seriousness with which it is executed. Beneath the humour is a sharp commentary on the fragile choreography of national defence and the ease with which a single misjudgement can spiral into catastrophe.
As the story unfolds, the stakes widen and deepen. The novel shifts from local confusion to institutional panic, from soldiers on a bridge to Cabinet ministers blustering in windowless rooms. Pochinov’s portrayal of government in crisis is wickedly observant, exposing the brittleness of leadership when faced with the unknown. The ministers are vain, irritable, self-important, and deeply human. Their scenes fizz with satire but are never so exaggerated that they stray beyond recognisable reality. In fact, that is the most unsettling part: Pochinov’s depiction of political incompetence feels alarmingly plausible.
Yet Pochinov is too skilled a writer to lean solely on humour or critique. When he chooses to introduce genuine darkness—such as the brutal, inexplicable murders at Blyford Hall Farm—he does so with restraint, trusting the reader to fill in the emotional weight. These moments of violence puncture the book’s levity like cold rain. They remind us that beneath every act of deception lies someone willing to cross moral lines. And they raise the question that hangs over the entire novel: who is pulling the strings, and why?
As Edward navigates these contradictions—flirtations on Harleys, dead farmers, vanishing tanks, officials who may know more than they admit—the reader senses the walls of a much larger puzzle closing in. Pochinov has an enviable talent for letting mystery accumulate quietly, without fanfare, until the reader realises they’ve been swept into something far more intricate than expected.
Equally impressive is Pochinov’s ear for dialogue. Whether he is writing Suffolk dialect, military banter, Cabinet-room sniping, or the exaggerated bravado of activists, he shows remarkable versatility. His scenes feel lived-in, textured, authentically British, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And yet he’s careful never to allow caricature to replace character. Even the most outlandish figures are grounded in detail.
Structurally, the novel is tight, cleverly paced, and remarkably clear considering the moving pieces. Pochinov’s experience—lifelong, diverse, and occasionally hair-raising—gives the narrative an authority that can’t be faked. He knows rural life, military life, political life, and the eccentricities of everyday people intimately. This breadth of lived experience is one of the novel’s great gifts: it allows him to juggle tones, voices, and viewpoints without losing coherence.
Perhaps the most extraordinary accomplishment of Maskirovka is the way it balances chaos with purpose. Every misdirection, every farcical twist, every shocking revelation feels part of a larger design. As readers, we are never quite sure whether we are witnessing a conspiracy, a prank, an uprising, an intelligence failure, or something stranger. And that uncertainty is the point. Pochinov invites us to sit inside the dissonance, to experience the vulnerability that comes when nothing—not news reports, not eyewitness accounts, not even the Army—can be trusted.
By the time the narrative threads begin to tighten, the reader has been thoroughly, delightfully played. This is a novel that rewards attention, questions assumptions, and delights in wrong-footing the complacent. It is, in every sense, a literary sleight-of-hand worthy of its name.
Willi Pochinov may have missed his self-imposed deadline to publish before his eightieth birthday, but Maskirovka was worth the wait. It is sharp, witty, haunting, and mischievously clever—a thriller that entertains while quietly interrogating the nature of truth in an age of noise.
A story could take you anywhere. Pochinov proves it can also take you somewhere you never expected to go.
