Owen Matthews

1961. Hidden deep within central Soviet Russia is a place that doesn't appear on any map: a city called Arzamas-16. Here a community of dedicated scientists and technicians is building the most powerful nuclear device the world will ever see. But days before the bomb is to be tested, a young physicist is found dead. His body contains enough radioactive poison to kill thousands. The Arzamas authorities believe it is suicide - they want the corpse disposed of, the incident filed and forgotten. But Moscow is alarmed by what's going on in this strange, isolated place. 

And so KGB major Alexander Vasin is sent to investigate. His wits will be tested against some of the most brilliant minds in the Soviet Union - eccentrics, patriots and dissidents who, because their work is considered to be of such vital national importance, have been granted the freedom to think and act, live and love as they wish.

Book 1 in the Black Sun Trilogy.

Born of a German father and a Russian mother, Richard Sorge moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. In the years leading up to and during the Second World War, he became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union's most formidable spy. Combining charm with ruthless manipulation, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society. His intelligence proved pivotal to the Soviet counter-offensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war itself. Drawing on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives, this is a major biography of one of the greatest spies who ever lived.

Inspired by one the least known but most terrifying moments in modern history - when the fate of the world lay with a lone, nervous Soviet naval officer one hundred meters under the Caribbean sea - lies at the heart of this breathtaking new Cold War thriller from the author of the acclaimed Black Sun. The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is searching for ghosts: for evidence of the long-rumoured existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelons of Soviet power.

But it's while on this wild goose chase, a high-stakes espionage race against a rival State agency, that Vasin first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr. As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines - each carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads - are ordered to make a covert run at the U.S. blockade in the Caribbean . . .

In a desolate Russian penal colony the radio broadcasts news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy... Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin's new posting as director of a gulag camp in the middle of the frozen tundra is far from a promotion. This is where disgraced agents like Vasin disappear - sent to die forgotten. And quietly. But tensions in the camp are running high and when a violent revolt breaks out Vasin finds himself on the run. With him is a mysterious prisoner - who holds the key to the most dangerous secret in the world: who ordered Kennedy's murder.

In a breathless race that takes them through the Soviet Union - from the barren Siberian wastelands to the stunning halls of the Katerina Palace and the grey streets of Leningrad and Moscow - Vasin must stay one step ahead of the most ruthless spy and police organizations in the world . . . and keep the most wanted man in Russia alive. It's a journey that will push Vasin's loyalty morality and his patriotism to the limit. And he must confront the ultimate choice: fall in line or die fighting the system. With masterful storytelling that weaves together an explosive moment in history with the cutthroat machinations of Soviet politics Owen Matthews' White Fox captures the paradigm-shifting assassination from a unique Soviet point of view. This is a page-turning thriller - a race against time across Soviet Russia where the participants face impossible odds and must decide between truth justice and all-out war.