Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Leningrad in the Winter of 1952, a ghostly city of shadows and fear, the perfect hunting ground for Koshchei, a killer named after a sinister figure from Slavic folklore. His victims are all veterans of the Great Patriotic War left for the authorities to find with their tongue cut out and a piece of paper bearing a cryptic message in its place.
Called back from exile in the brutal Siberian GULAG former militia investigator Revol Rossel is teamed up with his former torturer Major Nikitin to hunt the killer. The two sworn enemies must work together to unravel a mystery with its roots in the dying days of the Third Reich that could change the course of the Cold War.
This second novel from Chris Rickaby and Barney Thompson writing as Ben Creed has been compared to Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park. Big shoes to fill, even if you are wearing three pairs of socks to keep out the chill of a Russian winter. Thankfully they do so with no small amount of style.
A Traitor’s Heart takes us into the dark looking glass world of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, a place where the walls have ears, and the price of survival is often betraying someone else. The setting is recreated with meticulous attention to detail from the viciously tribal society of the GULAG archipelago to the fading grandeur of Leningrad. This authenticity is enhanced by walk on appearances by major figures of the time, including the great leader himself.
In Rossel Creed has created a central character with, as the title suggests, the heart of a traitor and the soul of an artist. A source of no small personal suffering for someone trying to negotiate a human jungle of ambition, duplicity, and cruelty where the killer he is hunting is less brutal in many ways than the system they are both trapped in.
This is a skilfully crafted historical crime novel that delivers bags of suspense and gives a stark picture of a society where truth is falsehood and enemies, and friends can change places in a moment.
