A Traitor's Heart

A Times 'Best New Thriller' for May 2022

'Enthralling . . . Sharp dialogue and flashes of dry wit' Financial Times

'Ben Creed has a genuine gift for conjuring up Stalin's Leningrad in all its beauty and misery' The Times

'A cleverly constructed thriller' Sunday Times

'A fantastically tense atmosphere . . . A spine-tingling page-turner' The Sun

Leningrad, winter 1952. An invisible killer known as Koshchei - a nightmare of Slavic folklore - stalks the streets, leaving a distinctive and gruesome mark upon its victims.

Three thousand kilometres away in a Gulag labour colony, threatened by the vicious criminals who rule the camp and tormented by the Arctic cold, former militia lieutenant Revol Rossel is close to death.

But then a brutal saviour descends from the skies: the state security interrogator who years ago ruined his life is back, tasking Rossel with tracking down the murderer.

As the hunt continues, the two men uncover riddle after riddle, including a clue to finding a weapon of unimaginable power - a weapon the Kremlin's scheming plotters will kill for...

“PRAISE FOR CITY OF GHOSTS : 'A highly assured and entertaining debut ... Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park [...] may have a true heir' The Times . 'A worthy successor to Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko ... A fine and often moving thriller' Financial Times . 'Reminded me of Gorky Park , only I liked this tense, complex thriller even better' James Patterson. 'Gripping ... An excellent start to a new historical crime series'”

'A cleverly constructed thriller' Sunday Times.
'A fantastically tense atmosphere, thickly spread with historical detail, makes this a spine-tingling page-turner' The Sun
'Enthralling ... The dark story is leavened with sharp dialogue and flashes of dry wit' Financial Times
'Ben Creed has a genuine gift for conjuring up Stalin's Leningrad in all its beauty and misery' The Times
PRAISE FOR CITY OF GHOSTS:
'A highly assured and entertaining debut ... Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park [...] may have a true heir' The Times.
'A worthy successor to Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko ... A fine and often moving thriller' Financial Times.
'Reminded me of Gorky Park, only I liked this tense, complex thriller even better' James Patterson.
'Gripping ... An excellent start to a new historical crime series' -- Vaseem Khan

Ben Creed is the pseudonym for Chris Rickaby and Barney Thompson. Chris found his way into advertising as a copywriter and, after working for various agencies, started his own called Everything Different. Barney is a classically trained musician who studied under the legendary conducting professor Ilya Musin at the St Petersburg Conservatory for two years. He is fluent in Russian and is now an editor.

Winter, 1952: Leningrad's icy streets are haunted by a murderer. Rossel must team up with Major Nikitin - the man who cut off virtuoso violinist Rossel's fingers - to hunt down the murderer. Winter, 1952 : Leningrad's icy streets are haunted by a murderer. The name is whispered everywhere - Koshchei has returned , the people say, Koshchei the Immortal . Koshchei, named after a sinister figure from Slavic folklore, is an invisible killer who cuts out the tongue of his victims and replaces it with a scroll of paper containing a few lines of what seems to be Italian verse. Three thousand kilometres away in a labour colony above the Arctic Circle, threatened by the Thieves who rule the camp, former militia lieutenant Revol Rossel is close to death. As helicopter blades whip the snow into hallucinatory flurries, Rossel watches the arrival of a saviour he hates: Major Nikitin, the man who once cut off the former virtuoso violinist's fingers. Along with skilled aviator Tanya 'Vassya' Vasilievna, the two men must hunt Koshchei down. On the trail, they uncover more riddles, including one centred on the ruins of Hitler's bunker, the Fuhrer's own copy of a Renaissance manual for tyrants, and secret code hidden within that leads to a weapon of unimaginable power. A weapon coveted by the scheming plotters of Stalin's Kremlin. What Rossel and Nikitin do not know is that the mystery and the murderer are inextricably linked. And to save themselves they must not only catch Koshchei but also uncover the identity of another ghost - a ghost hiding among the remnants of Hitler's once all-powerful Third Reich.

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