Moscow, 1936, and Stalin’s Great Terror is just beginning. In a church, a woman is found dead, her body on display. Captain Alexei Korolev of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia is assigned, but the NKVD is watching and exile is a real possibility. Committed to the case, Korolev enters the realm of the Thieves, rulers of Moscow’s underworld. But as more bodies are found, Korolev begins to question whom he can trust and who are the real criminals.

With Alexei Korolev, William Ryan has given us one of the most compelling detectives in modern literature, a man who will lead us through a fear-choked Russia to find the only thing that can save him—the truth.