Moscow USA - Tapa dura

IN RUSSIA TODAY EVERYTHING IS NEW, EVERYTHING IS TIED TO THE PAST.

For Nikolai Sherenko, the past was the KGB, now it is a job in private security. For Alina Mikhailova Buskova, the past was a warm family life, now it is the cold world of business. For American Jack Kincaid, the last five years have also seen change: he was in the CIA, now he is heading to the heart of the former 'evil empire' to investigate a crime that will tie together past and present, East and West, friend and foe in a switchback drama of shocking power.

Sherenko and Kincaid are poised in the pursuit of $6m that has gone missing at Moscow Airport.

So recently enemies, the two men are united now by more than a job: both are haunted by events in their clandestine careers, and both come to realize that it will take more than time to exorcize the ghosts.

Investigating the mafia and the high-life associates of Alina Buskova, they begin to uncover a connection far more important and far more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.

Soon, the world is turning upside-down. Sherenko, in love for the first time since the end of his marriage, is suddenly a suspect in his own investigation. Kincaid is reminded that in the field, betrayal is common currency.

The hunters have become the hunted, pursued by more and more parties with a ruthless interest in keeping the secrets of the past buried, in order to protect the crimes of the present. And eventually, the secrets and the crimes, the past and the present, converge on Moscow USA and an explosive moment of violence.

Packed with controversial insight into the new Russia and our part in its exploitation, bristling with tradecraft and brimming with the passionate intensity that is a trademark quality of Gordon Stevens's bestselling thrillers, 'Moscow USA' is both a love story and s suspense novel of truly memorable power.

'Gordon Stevens is a first-rate thriller writer, all action, plot and tension'
SARAH BROADHURST