The Holy Thief (The Korolev Series, 1) - Tapa dura

'Ryan's novel has an authority that belies his first-novel status... Ryan demonstrates considerable skill in evoking this benighted period, along with a deftness at ringing the changes on familiar crime plotting moves.The auguries for a series, of which The Holy Thief is the first book, are very promising indeed.' --Daily Express

'impressive debut.' --Saturday Times Review

'excellently-observed characters who exist in a nightmarish world of fear, suspicion and danger. Ryan skillfully captures the reality of life in the most spied-upon society in history...The Holy Thief is an impressive debut from Ryan. It pulls off the difficult task of laying down ample foundations for a scheduled subsequent series without burdening its narrative drive with excessive back-story detail. I look forward to Captain Korolev's further exploits under the cold gaze of Comrade Stalin.' --Yorkshire Evening Post

'It's a tough, suspenseful premise for a debut, contrasting claustrophobic atmosphere with personal optimism in a way that can only intensify as the series continues.'
--Financial Times

'Plunges the reader into an atmospherically conjured 1930's Moscow'
--The Independent

'Set in a vividly imagined Stalinist Russia, where the creeping paranoia of a surveillance state blends perfectly with the brutal serial murders' --Metro

Moscow, 1936 and Stalin's Great Terror is beginning. In a deconsecrated Church, a young woman is found dead, her mutilated body displayed on the altar for all to see. Captain Alexei Dimitrevich Korolev of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia, is asked to investigate. But when he discovers that the victim is an American citizen, the NKVD - the most feared organisation in Russia - becomes involved. As more bodies are discovered and the pressure from above builds, Korolev begins to question who he can trust; and who, in this Russia where fear, uncertainty and hunger prevails, are the real criminals. Soon, Korolev will find not only his moral and political ideals threatened, but also his life . . .