Death of the Red Rider
A Leningrad Confidential
-
- $17.99
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
"Yakovleva pick[s] up the torch from Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series”. — The New York Times
“A superb read, with some unexpected turns right at the end." — Crime Book of the Month, The Critic
"Fascinating reading. . . This series has legs!" — Publishers Weekly
On the eve of Soviet purges, Detective Zaitsev returns to solve the murder of a Red Army horseman — the second installment in the ultimate noir detective series
Perfect for fans of thrilling historical crime fiction, Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels, and Lara Prescott's The Secrets We Kept
As the Red Terror gathers pace, a horseman and horse mysteriously collapse in the middle of a race in Leningrad. Weary Detective Zaitsev, still raw from his last brush with the Party, is dispatched to the Soviet state cavalry school in Novocherkassk, southern Russia, to investigate. As he witnesses the horror of the Holodomor, and the impact of Soviet collectivisation, he struggles to penetrate the murky, secretive world of the cavalry school.
Why has this particular murder attracted so much attention from Soviet officials? Zaitsev needs to answer this question and solve the case before the increasingly paranoid authorities turn their attention towards him...
Don’t miss the second installment in the atmospheric and relentlessly dark detective series set in Stalinist Russia, where corruption, informers, and purges take paranoia to the next level.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yakovleva follows up 2022's Punishment of a Hunter with an atmospheric police procedural set in 1931 Leningrad, a destabilized world where the streets have been renamed for communist leaders and the rules of justice are being rewritten at every turn. Detective Vasily Zaitsev takes the case of a harness racing driver named Perlov, who's died in a suspicious accident. Perlov was an instructor at a prestigious cavalry school, and when its leaders and cadets suddenly depart for the southern city of Novocherkassk after his death, Zaitsev follows, arriving at what Soviet leaders have passed off as the land of plenty only to find people starving in the streets. Among a sprawling cast of jaded bureaucrats and suffering citizens, Zaitsev must navigate shifting political mores as he tries to solve the mystery of Perlov's death before he loses the allegiance of the anxious officials who've hired him. All the moral murk makes for fascinating reading, and Yakovleva never lets the historical detail crowd out the central mystery. This series has legs.
