Frances Assa: "This in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times on-line Crossword:  '61. St. Petersburg's River (Hint: Anagram of VANE.)'."

 

JM: Brief and to the point, as usual, with a great-fun 'oblique reference' - and who'd have guessed that the Neva lurked in Vane? (When I feel claustrophobia from too much Nabokovian word-worlds this is the kind of spring-board that offers a world-word in its wake)