A Traitor'S Heart Av Ben Creed

A Times ''Best New Thriller'' for May 2022 ''Enthralling ... Sharp dialogue and flashes of dry wit'' Financial Times''Ben Creed has a genuine gift for conjuring up Stalin''s Leningrad in all its beauty and misery'' The Times''A cleverly constructed thriller'' Sunday Times''A fantastically tense atmosphere ... A spine-tingling page-turner'' The Sun___________Leningrad, winter 1952. An invisible killer known as Koshchei ¿ a nightmare of Slavic folklore ¿ stalks the streets, leaving a distinctive and gruesome mark upon its victims.Three thousand kilometres away in a Gulag labour colony, threatened by the vicious criminals who rule the camp and tormented by the Arctic cold, former militia lieutenant Revol Rossel is close to death.But then a brutal saviour descends from the skies: the state security interrogator who years ago ruined his life is back, tasking Rossel with tracking down the murderer.As the hunt continues, the two men uncover riddle after riddle, including a clue to finding a w

A Times 'Best New Thriller' for May 2022 'Enthralling ... The dark story is leavened with sharp dialogue and flashes of dry wit' Financial Times 'Ben Creed has a genuine gift for conjuring up Stalin's Leningrad in all its beauty and misery' The Times 'A cleverly constructed thriller' Sunday Times 'A fantastically tense atmosphere, thickly spread with historical detail, makes this a spine-tingling page-turner' The Sun Winter, 1952: Leningrad's icy streets are haunted by a murderer. The name is whispered everywhere - Koshchei has returned, the people say, Koshchei the Immortal.Koshchei, named after a sinister figure from Slavic folklore, is an invisible killer who cuts out the tongue of his victims and replaces it with a scroll of paper containing a few lines of what seems to be Italian verse. Three thousand kilometres away in a labour colony above the Arctic Circle, threatened by the Thieves who rule the camp, former militia lieutenant Revol Rossel is close to death. As helicopter blades whip the snow into hallucinatory flurries, Rossel watches the arrival of a saviour he hates: Major Nikitin, the man who once cut off the former virtuoso violinist's fingers.Along with skilled aviator Tanya 'Vassya' Vasilievna, the two men must hunt Koshchei down. On the trail, they uncover more riddles, including one centred on the ruins of Hitler's bunker, the Fuhrer's own copy of a Renaissance manual for tyrants, and secret code hidden within that leads to a weapon of unimaginable power. A weapon coveted by the scheming plotters of Stalin's Kremlin.What Rossel and Nikitin do not know is that the mystery and the murderer are inextricably linked. And to save themselves they must not only catch Koshchei but also uncover the identity of another ghost - a ghost hiding among the remnants of Hitler's once all-powerful Third Reich.