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

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 weapon of unimaginable power - a weapon the Kremlin's scheming plotters will kill for . . .