Black Sun
A Novel Based on an Incredible True Story
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The "kind of thriller you want to savor as you turn the pages" (New York Journal of Books), set at the height—and in the heart—of Soviet power, with intricately plotted machinations, secrets and surveillance, corrupt politicos and puppet masters in the Politburo, and one devastating weapon.
It is the dawn of the 1960s. In order to investigate the gruesome death of a brilliant young physicist, KGB officer Major Alexander Vasin must leave Moscow for Arzamas-16, a top secret research city that does not appear on any map.
There he comes up against the brightest, most cutthroat brain trust in Russia who, on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev himself, are building a nuclear weapon with 3,800 times the destructive potential of the Hiroshima bomb. RDS-220 is a project of such vital national importance that, unlike everyone else in the Soviet Union, the scientists of Arzamas-16 are free to think and act, live and love as they wish, so long as they complete the project and prove to their capitalist enemies that the USSR now commands the heights of nuclear supremacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1961, a fearsome new bomb is under development at Arzamas-16, a secret city deep within the Soviet Union, the setting for British author Matthews's intriguing first novel, loosely based on a true story. Nine days before the nuclear device, which is capable of indescribable destruction, is to be tested for the first time, Fyodor Petrov, a brilliant young physicist working on the project, turns up dead from radiation poisoning. KGB investigator Alexander Vasin is dispatched from Moscow to determine whether Petrov was murdered and, if so, why. Matthews (Stalin's Children) makes the most of this promising setup for a while, as Vasin navigates the insular politics and unspoken rules of Arzamas. He soon finds that the residents and the scientists at the bomb-making facility tend to close ranks in the face of outside scrutiny. Unfortunately, about midway through, the plot starts to take too many twists and turns. Readers looking for a historical re-creation and unusual locale a city that exists on no maps, populated by a curious cast of characters will welcome this promising if flawed entrant to the thriller genre.
