Inspector Pekkala - novels by

  • It is the summer of 1941. Russia has been invaded.




    As Hitler's forces smash into Soviet territory, annihilating the Red Army divisions in its path, a lone German scout plane is forced down. Contained within the briefcase of its passenger is a painting of a hyalophora cecropia, otherwise known as a red moth.




    Military Intelligence dismisses the picture as insignificant, but in the state of emergency Stalin suspects a German plot. He summons his old adversary, Inspector Pekkala - the elusive Finn who was once Tsar Nicholas II's personal detective - to discover the real significance of the red moth.


    As the storm gathers around them, Pekkala soon finds himself on the path of the most formidable art thieves in history, whose real target is a secret and prized possession of the Romanovs, once considered to be the eighth wonder of the world.


    But as the Soviet Union crumbles in the face of the advancing cataclysm, Pekkala realises that to protect the Tsar's treasure he must break through enemy lines in a desperate mission to outfox the German invaders, or face the wrath of Stalin himself.