by A. D. Miller
First published 2012
Nick, a British lawyer fleeing his midlife crisis, arrives in Moscow seeking fresh opportunities in the Wild East. The city seduces him with women, money, and luxury as he navigates a world split between pleasure and desperation, corruption and goodness. Beautiful landscapes contrast with immoral nightclubs in this Russia where secrets and bodies emerge when the snow melts. Nick learns the dangers of this environment one by one as he becomes entangled in the dark underbelly of post-Soviet society. The cold, gloomy Moscow streets hold mysteries that surface with the thaw, pulling Nick deeper into a web of moral compromise. His pursuit of new beginnings transforms into a confrontation with the impossibility of love and the price of ambition in a place where only crime stories exist.
Genres: fiction, crime, 21st-century, mystery-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, moral-compromise
Setting: Moscow, Russia
Period: Post-Soviet
288 pages · Paperback · Pegasus
Content warnings: violence