Books: Everybody Did It

THE CASE OF COMRADE TULAYEV (306 pp.)—Victor Serge—Doubleday ($3).

Author Victor Serge's novel is a murder story, Russian style. One crisp February night, a shot slapped echoes in a narrow Moscow street and Comrade Tulayev, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, fell to the sidewalk dead. His murderer, a young office worker disgruntled with the regime, got clean away. The time was just after the Moscow trials of 1937-38, and Comrade Tulayev had handled the university purges and mass deportations. Plenty of people had reason to kill him. But to...