Showing results by author "Ben Creed" in All Categories

Leningrad, 1951. The shadow of war lingers. Revol Rossel - once a virtuoso violinist with a glittering future - is now a humble state militia cop, forced to investigate desperate crimes in this desperate era. But when five frozen corpses are found neatly arranged between railway lines, Rossel is faced with the most puzzling - and most dangerous - case of his career. His hunt for the truth leads him to the dark heart of Leningrad’s musical establishment, and, ultimately, to the highest levels of the Kremlin itself.

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.

Winter 1953. Beneath a pitch-black Leningrad sky, two bodies lie near the towering statue of Lenin outside the Finland Station. 'Nothing sinister, here, just a simple hit and run,' an officer in the MGB secret police assures militia detective Revol Rossel. Now he knows it's murder. Only recently released from a brutal Siberian labor camp and determined to find his missing sister at last, Rossel wants nothing to do with this new case. But his alcoholic, broken superior officer, Captain Liphukin, seizes upon it as his salvation – a last chance to be a true Soviet hero.

Leningrad im eisigen Winter 1951: Wie auf Notenlinien wurden fünf grausam verstümmelte Leichen zwischen drei Bahngleisen arrangiert - ein Anblick, der selbst die hartgesottenen Militärpolizisten um Leutnant Revol Rossel zutiefst erschüttert. Könnte Stalins gefürchtetes Ministerium für Staatssicherheit dahinterstecken? Leutnant Rossel glaubt, dass er seit dem Krieg und einem Zusammenstoß mit der Geheimpolizei nichts mehr zu verlieren hat - doch als er während der Ermittlungen mit seiner eigenen Vergangenheit konfrontiert wird, muss er erkennen, wie viel für ihn noch immer auf dem Spiel steht.