The Matryoshka Murders - Paperback

by Kay Williams (Author), Eileen Wyman (Author)

January 1991. Leningrad is starving, freezing, and ready to explode. Crime is rampant. Soldiers roam the streets. Rumors of a coup whisper through every hallway.

Documentary filmmaker Kate Hennessey arrives for an international festival - but instead of gathering footage for her NYC course, she records something she was never meant to see: an officer with a scarred face speaking with a baby-faced civilian in the hotel bar. Her guidebook warns her: No filming the military.

Then a terrified 17-year-old girl named Sveta confides that she fears she will be killed.

Hours later, Kate and Sveta are abducted by a drunken cab driver and left to die in a frozen cemetery. Kate escapes. Sveta does not.

Was the attack random? Was Sveta the target? Or was Kate?

As Kate investigates, she uncovers a hidden world of LGBTQ+ persecution, underground cafés, psychiatric "clinics," and a police force willing to silence anyone who threatens the state. A scar-faced KGB officer begins to follow her. A red-haired soldier appears everywhere she goes. And when her hotel burns, Kate realizes someone wants her dead - and her footage destroyed.

With her videotapes strapped to her body, Kate flees Leningrad. But the danger she escaped has followed her home.

A gripping political thriller of surveillance, identity, and courage, The Matryoshka Murders is perfect for fans of international suspense, Cold War intrigue, and female-driven mysteries.