Russia

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

By MarinaSofia

21 April, 2015

First published in 2008, Child 44 put Tim Rob Smith on the map as an author of taut, gritty crime fiction. Like Gorky Park, it used Soviet Russia as its backdrop – with all the nuances of communist justice. Also like Gorky Park it’s now been…

iBook Kindle Print Reviews

Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson

By DavidPrestidge

25 March, 2015

Lionel Davidson and his thrillers have been unjustly neglected in recent years. He blazed a trail with articulate and complex international spy stories just before John Le Carre and Len Deighton achieved celebrity status. However, a few years ago Philip Pullman selected Davidson’s 1994 novel…

iBook Kindle Print Reviews

The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland

By RoughJustice

12 January, 2015

The Inspector Pekkala series began in 2010 with The Eye of the Red Tsar and now reaches its fifth novel. The books are set in the Soviet Union during WWII; specifically on the Eastern Front where Axis forces battled the Red Army from 1941 onwards…

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A Morbid Habit by Annie Hauxwell

By DavidPrestidge

23 July, 2014

If you had to create a check-list for a spy fiction heroine, then Catherine Berlin would not tick many boxes. Let’s try: Young and glamorous? No, she shows all of her 57 years, and looks slightly the worse for wear. High profile job? Sorry. She’s…

Kindle Reviews

Kill with a Borrowed Knife: or Agent Ai by Michael Wreford

By nagaisayonara

31 May, 2014

Plenty of spy and espionage stories focus on Europe and Russia, set mainly between the 1930s and the 1970s, when borders were stricter, and the flow of information across them was mainly in the form of papers lining the false bottoms of suitcases. Agent Ai…

Kindle Reviews

NTN: Chasing The Storm by Martin Molsted

By DeathBecomesHer

19 November, 2013

It’s April, 2009, and on a peaceful spring afternoon in Hamburg, businessman Torgrim Rygg witnesses a woman being shot dead, and sets off in a fruitless pursuit of her attacker. It’s an action that will have huge consequences for the former member of the Norwegian…

iBook Kindle Print Reviews

Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith

By crimefictionlover

6 November, 2013

It’s over 30 years and six books since Arkady Renko first appeared in Gorky Park. In his exquisite first mystery, he swam against the current of Soviet corruption attempting to solve three Moscow murders. Today, the crimson of communism has turned a rustier shade of…

Features

A classic revisited: Gorky Park

By crimefictionlover

21 October, 2013

Ronald Reagan was steering his course to the White House when Gorky Park came out in 1981. Meanwhile, an ageing autocrat called Leonid Brezhnev, with mighty eyebrows, was the General Secretary of the USSR. In the West, we worried about mutually assured nuclear armageddon. The…

Crime Fiction Lover

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson

The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland

A Morbid Habit by Annie Hauxwell

Kill with a Borrowed Knife: or Agent Ai by Michael Wreford

NTN: Chasing The Storm by Martin Molsted

Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith

A classic revisited: Gorky Park

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