Last year, with William Ryan’s The Holy Thief, detective-fiction aficionados welcomed the thrillingly horrific first instalment in a new series set in 1930s Moscow.
Last year, with William Ryan’s The Holy Thief, detective-fiction aficionados welcomed the thrillingly horrific first instalment in a new series set in 1930s Moscow. In his first outing, Alexei Dmitrievich Korolev, a detective in the Moscow militia, managed to navigate the murky waters following the fall of Yagoda, head of the NKVD, and the onslaught of Stalin’s Great Purge.
Now, in the follow-up, Korolev has the dubious honour of being trusted as a safe pair of hands by Yagoda’s successor, Ezhov, who wants the police to investigate the supposed suicide of his ‘special friend’, a film production assistant. He cannot believe she killed herself and Korolev is despatched to the film-set in Odessa to find out.
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