The Vultures

Warsaw and Petersburg under the Tsar: a Polish prince's estate, a Russian secret policeman, an Englishman who wants no part of it, and a conspiracy that everyone can smell and nobody will name. Merriman was Hugh Stowell Scott, a Lloyd's underwriter who used a pen name so the City would not find out he wrote novels; he travelled where he set his books, and the Poland here is under occupation and knows it. Fifty-seven plates of winter forests, snow ploughs and storm-tossed ships by painters including Munch and Aivazovsky carry the cold, occupied light of the novel across its pages.