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Published Feb 2012
272 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Stalin's most trusted secret agent, the legendary Inspector Pekkala, is on his deadliest mission - one that could save his country... or plunge it into the abyss.
It is 1939. Russia teeters on the verge of war with Germany. It is also on the brink of bankruptcy. To preserve his regime, Stalin orders a search for the legendary missing gold of Tsar Nicholas II. For this task, he chooses Pekkala, the former investigator for the Tsar. To accomplish his mission, Pekkala will go undercover, returning to Siberia and the nightmare of his own past, where he was once a prisoner in the notorious Gulag known as Borodok.
Pekkala must infiltrate a gang of convicts still loyal to the Tsar who, it is rumored, know the whereabouts of the precious gold. He soon learns that the best-kept secrets are those that no one even knows exist.
In the brutal frozen fortress where his survival once made him a myth, he begins to unravel the true identity of a murdered inmate, whose own mission to Siberia has lain buried for years deep within the mysterious Archive 17, where long-lost files obscure a shocking conspiracy that could decide the future of the Soviet Union itself. As more people die around him, Pekkala must decide where his true loyalties lie, or else take his place among the dead.
With the superb research and stunning suspense that are his trademarks, Sam Eastland delivers his most powerful Pekkala novel yet - the best in a mystery series riveting readers and reviewers alike.
"Starred Review. Eastland captures the brutality of Borodok and the barren desolation of the surrounding area, while maintaining a consistently high level of suspense." - Publishers Weekly
"A nine-page historical addendum offers context, but it's hard to escape the sense that history trumps fiction here..." - Booklist
"But while not on a par with Martin Cruz Smith's Renko novels, Eastland's third Inspector Pekkala entry is a model of narrative control and intricate plotting." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Archive 17 was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sam Eastland is the pseudonymn of Paul Watkins. He is a teacher and writer-in-residence at The Peddie School, and formerly taught at Lawrenceville School. He attended the Dragon School, Oxford, Eton and Yale University. He received a B.A. from Yale and was a University Fellow at Syracuse University, New York.
His recollections of his time at the Dragon School and Etonform his autobiographical work Stand Before Your God: An American Schoolboy in England (1993). He wrote his first book, Night Over Day Over Night (1988), when he was 16 years old.
His other works are Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn (1989), Archangel (1995), The Story of my Disappearance (1997), The Ice Soldier (2005), The Fellowship of Ghosts: Travels in the Land of Midnight Sun (2006), The Red Moth (2013), The Beast in the Red ...
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