First published 2013
Investigator Arkady Renko discovers tapes of reporter Tatiana Petrovna describing brutal crimes that contradict official Kremlin accounts. Tatiana died after falling from a sixth floor Moscow window the same week mob billionaire Grisha Grigorenko was murdered. Renko alone sees the connection between these deaths. Following leads to Kaliningrad, a former Cold War secret city isolated from the rest of Russia, he enters a strange landscape of shifting sand dunes and abandoned children. A notebook written in a dead translator's private code becomes crucial evidence. Racing to decode what the translator discovered, Renko uncovers secrets that pull him deeper into Tatiana's history and Russia's corrupt future. In Kaliningrad, where bulletproof cars and Baltic Fleet corruption create the nation's highest crime rate, Renko confronts the reality that modern Russia mirrors the brutality of its Soviet past.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: cover-up, investigator
Setting: Moscow, Kaliningrad
Period: modern
292 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster