When Rob Ferguson went off to the five former Soviet ’Stans of Central Asia to work on a project to save the rapidly disappearing Aral Sea, he expected to have challenges and adventures, but he didn’t anticipate ending up a suspect in a brutal murder investigation. Dancing with Vodka Terrorists is a tragicomic farce and an engrossing real-life thriller told with panache and wry humour and stars a bizarre cast of corrupt apparatchiks, jolly consultants, devious autocrats and a bewitching belly-dancer who ends up gutted in a bathtub. Somehow Ferguson survives it all, wit still intact.