The Novel as Matryoshka Doll

In Robert Hough’s The Culprits, the basic girl-meets-guy story is delivered via Hank Wallins and Anna Verkoskova. Hank is a lunky, middle-aged loner enduring tinnitus and a deadening job as a data processor on the night shift at an insurance company. Anna is 21 and a student of marketing. They find one another, however, in that most 21st-century manner: Hank, surfing the internet late at night in Toronto, comes upon Anna, from far-away St. Petersburg, on a website called fromrussiawithlove.com.

The concept of mail-order romance has long played a role in our society. But its possibilities have been blown wide open by three technologies peculiar to our time: the internet, credit card and affordable air travel. In November 2000, I undertook a kind of undercover magazine assignment accompanying 20 North American men to Russia. The men were mostly American, although there were a couple of Canadians and a physician from Guatemala. They had spent the previous...