I recall reading this book (from Lume Books now, available free on Kindle from Amazon Prime) when I was living in Dallas, and was quite impressed with the globtrotting, ranging from the Canadian maratimes to Moscow and NW Russia, as a linguist tracks down the wealthy father of a girl friend. The novel deals a lot with potential right wing politics in the Soviet Union before breakup.
There are some details here: Montreal Gazette, article by Barbara Black, Oct 5, 1985. newslink
I remember particularly a sequence where the protagonist rents a car in Moscow or St. Petersburg and drives to NW Russia. The area has been the setting of a few Russian thriller movies, like "The Return", as if there were something to hide there around Lake Ladoga. That area of the world drew attention during the Russo-Finnish war (WWII). Now it might be interesting as Finland prepares to join NATO (as well as Sweden) after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On Dec 4 2016 there was a bizarre assassination of three women, including two journalists, in a border town of Imatra, across the border from the Russian town of Svetogorsk ("Fountain City"). The area is known for pulp and paper manufacturing. A news account of the incident at the Guardian is here.
The style of the novel by a Canadian writer reminds one of the work of Irving Wallace ("The Prize", "The Plot", "The Seven Minutes"), less popular after the breakup of the Soviet Union.