Red Icon: An Inspector Pekkala Novel of Suspense

by Sam Eastland

Overview

A big satisfying Stalin-era thriller from the master of the genre, the perfect read for fans of Phillip Kerr, Erik Larson or Robert Harris. The German Army begins to shatter before the advancing Soviet forces in 1944. Two Russian soldiers burrow into the crypt of a German church, where, clutched in the hands of a priest's skeleton, they discover a priceless icon last seen in the grasp of Rasputin, the mad monk who mesmerized the Romanovs. When news of the discovery reaches Moscow, Stalin calls upon his most trusted investigator, Inspector Pekkala, to unravel the secret of the icon's past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623160869
Publisher:	Subtext
Publication date:	11/01/2015
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	267,396
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sam Eastland is the nom de plume of novelist and memoirist Paul Watkins. He has written forThe London Times,The London Sunday Times,The New York TimesandThe Observer. For the past 25 years, he has taught at the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/05/2015
Early in Eastland’s excellent sixth Inspector Pekkala novel (after 2014’s The Beast in the Red Forest), Nicholas II gives the Finnish inspector (who’s the czar’s personal investigator) an assignment at the outbreak of WWI that involves a small painting known as The Shepherd, a religious icon believed to have mystical properties. In 1915, the czarina entrusts the painting to her spiritual adviser, Grigori Rasputin, and soon it’s lost, possibly destroyed. In 1945, Pekkala’s new boss, Joseph Stalin, orders him to find the missing icon. Pekkala uncovers a trail of infamy that involves the Soviet secret police, an unauthorized peace delegation, a deadly poison that ends up in the hands of Adolf Hitler, and a religious sect that practices ritual castration. Eastland (the pseudonym of Paul Watkins) ties the complicated plot neatly together, working in fascinating historical details. Newcomers curious to know what Pekkala was up to in the 30 years in between will want to read the earlier entries in this fine historical suspense series. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

10/01/2015
Weaving the fates of the Volga Germans brought to Russia by Catherine the Great and the Skoptsy, a reviled offshoot of Russian Orthodoxy, Eastland's sixth Pekkala outing (after The Beast in the Red Forest) surges between the two great wars of the 20th century. To protect his people, Tsar Nicholas II invoked a powerful icon, but when it was stolen, doom engulfed the empire. During World War II, two Soviet soldiers find the artifact in a German church. Stalin seeks to harness the icon's power to defeat the Nazi war machine. He orders Pekkala to vet the object's authenticity. Unbeknownst even to the notorious Emerald Eye is the butcher who abandoned his German heritage to become a Skoptsy adherent. He is the mastermind who plots the modern Armageddon. Eastland (the pen name of writer Paul Watkins) loads the story with abundant emotive details that give this historical re-creation a thrilling momentum. Rasputin, the Tsarina, and Hitler are among the real and fictional characters brought to life by the author with his polished literary skill. VERDICT Fans of Pekkala will race through this suspenseful story and hasten to recommend it to other lovers of stories about Russia's deep, dark, and deadly past.—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Library Journal

2015-10-07
A sixth entry from the case files of troubled Finnish detective Inspector Pekkala. This is another exciting historical thriller from the prolific Eastland (The Beast in the Red Forest, 2014, etc.), the pen name for American literary novelist Paul Watkins (Ice Soldier, 2005, etc.). This entry finds Pekkala working in two eras. We first meet him working as Czar Nicholas' right-hand man in pre-Revolutionary Russia, a role that puts him in the middle of political intrigue and pits him against the mystic Rasputin, who entranced the czar's wife with his care of their hemophiliac son. The other strand of the book takes place in 1945 as the war rages on and Pekkala is one of Stalin's most trusted investigators. The item linking these two sides of the story is a rare icon called "The Shepherd," which Pekkala believed was destroyed by a mad priest in 1914. When two Russians discover the icon in a grave in a country church outside Berlin, the dictator orders Pekkala to investigate its authenticity. What doesn't change between the two stories is Pekkala, with his fierce intelligence and wounded heart. "There are some things from which a man does not recover," Eastland writes. "There is no hiding place deep enough inside the catacombs of his brain where he can hide the memories. They will always find their way out, baying like wolves in the black tunnels of his mind until they reach the light again. The only thing that he can do is let them come, fighting the nightmares until even the demons which brought them grow sick of the carnage." The author takes his fragile hero down some impressively murky tunnels as Pekkala tracks the icon's origins to a creepy, true-life secret sect of Russian outcasts known as the Skoptsy, or "castrated ones." Worse, the madmen have gotten their hands on a little-known German nerve agent called the Sartaman Project and are threatening to use their weapon of mass destruction. Another rousing wartime thriller that gets its facts and its storytelling right.

Kirkus Reviews