Good Reasons to Die

Shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger 2023

'An excellent crime thriller with an explosive climax' Bill Todd, The Sun

'A suspenseful, atmospheric ride' Ben East, Observer

A haunting thriller set in the radioactive Chernobyl exclusion zone, Good Reasons to Die will keep readers hooked to the last page.

In a village close to Chernobyl, detectives Joseph Melnyk and Galina Novak uncover a man's mutilated body hanging from a building. All clues left at the scene of the crime point to a double homicide that took place on the very night that the nuclear power plant exploded.

Doubtful of the abilities of the Ukrainian police, the murdered man's father, a Moscow mafia boss, summons Rybalko, a Russian police officer of dubious morals, to conduct a parallel investigation to find and execute his son's killer. Rybalko goes to Ukraine and recovers the corpse, which no-one has dared to touch because of its radioactive contamination.

Good Reasons to Die is a breath-taking thriller set in a dislocated Ukraine where armed conflicts, economic collapse and ecological demands are interwoven with the exhilarating hunt to find a deranged serial killer.

“'Remarkable'”

'An excellent crime thriller with an explosive climax' -- Bill Todd, The Sun
'A suspenseful, atmospheric ride' -- Ben East, Observer
-- Franck Thilliez, Le Monde
'[Morgan Audic] has earned his place next to the best in the genre' -- Bruno Corty, Figaro

Born in Saint-Malo in 1980, Morgan Audic spent his childhood in Cancale. He has lived in Rennes since 2010, where he teaches history and geography in high school. He is the author of Too Many Deaths in Wonderland (Le Rouergue, 2016) and Good Reasons to Die (Albin Michel, 2019).

Sam Taylor is a British novelist and an award-winning literary translator. His translations include the works of Laurent Binet, Leila Slimani, Riad Sattouf, Maylis de Kerangal and Antonin Varenne. His first translation of Laurent Binet's HHhH (Harvill Secker, 2012) was shortlisted for three awards, including the 2012 French-American Translation Prize, and his translation of Hubert Mingarelli's A Meal in Winter was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

A thriller set in the radioactive Chernobyl exclusion zone. Armed conflicts, economic collapse and ecological demands are interwoven with the hunt to find a deranged serial killer. A haunting thriller set in the radioactive Chernobyl exclusion zone, Good Reasons to Die will keep readers hooked to the last page. In a village close to Chernobyl, detectives Joseph Melnyk and Galina Novak uncover a man's mutilated body hanging from a building. All clues left at the scene of the crime point to a double homicide that took place on the very night that the nuclear power plant exploded. Doubtful of the abilities of the Ukrainian police, the murdered man's father, a Moscow mafia boss, summons Rybalko, a Russian police officer of dubious morals, to conduct a parallel investigation to find and execute his son's killer. Rybalko goes to Ukraine and recovers the corpse, which no-one has dared to touch because of its radioactive contamination. Good Reasons to Die is a breath-taking thriller set in a dislocated Ukraine where armed conflicts, economic collapse and ecological demands are interwoven with the exhilarating hunt to find a deranged serial killer.

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