The new novel “Gladiators of Spartak” by the famous prose writer Georgy Mironov could be classified in genre as both a thriller and a psychological detective story. Events develop in it so quickly that the reader does not have time to follow the attacks of Spartak on the football fields Europe, and behind the brutal fight between two bosses of the “Russian mafia” around the EuroTOTO tournament.

And yet this is a novel, not a crime essay or a documentary story. At the same time, a combination of a successful description of the realities of big-time sports. and fiction creates a wonderful effect of verisimilitude in the novel. Spartak has not yet won the European Cup. But only for now!