The Darkening Field

Publishers Weekly

Ryan’s compelling if less than fully satisfying second Stalin-era thriller (after 2010’s The Holy Thief) takes Moscow CID detective Alexei Korolev to 1937 Odessa to look into the apparent suicide of Maria Lenskaya, a production assistant on a movie called The Darkening Field, found hanging in her room near the set. When Korolev examines the body, he detects marks indicating “that the rope she was found hanging from was not the cause of death.” Korolev joins forces with a gutsy junior detective from the Odessa CID, Nadezhda Slivka, to pursue the subsequent murder investigation. As the two interview reluctant witnesses and fight Communist bureaucracy, they must avoid making any political missteps. While an ever-widening cast and a few too many twists tend to undermine the story’s clear logic and atmospheric feel, readers will want to see more of Korolev, a weary but determined cop who puts justice ahead of Stalinist politics—at his peril. 75,000-copy first printing. Agent: David Higham Associates. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

Praise for The Darkening Field

“Booklist lauded Ryan’s first Korolev novel, The Holy Thief, and this successor fully delivers on the promise of that judgment. Korolev is a wonderful character, a spiritual ancestor of Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko, persevering amid the murderous paranoia of Stalin’s Russia. The plot is intricate, the action satisfying, and Ryan’s use of period detail, including the brutal “collectivization“ of the Ukraine and that region’s nationalist and anarchist movements, makes for exhilarating reading."

—Booklist (starred review)

Praise for The Holy Thief

"One of the year's most exciting [debuts].... While the search for Russian icons will bring to mind Martin Cruz Smith's brilliant Gorky Park, Ryan puts a fresh, original spin on the briskly paced The Holy Thief delving into Soviet politics, culture and corruption."

—Oline H. Cogdill, Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Korolev also is a moral, compassionate man who becomes increasingly horrified by Soviet society... This is British writer William Ryan's first historical mystery... One hopes there is more of Korolev to come.”

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Impressive... Ryan, who merits comparison to Tom Rob Smith, makes palpable the perpetual state of fear of being reported as disloyal, besides dramatizing the difficulty of being an honest cop in a repressive police state. Readers will hope Korolev has a long career ahead of him."

—Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Remarkable thriller.... In his solitude and resolve, Ryan's Korolev evokes Martin Cruz Smith's fierce Arkady Renko, while the period detail and gore call to mind Tom Rob Smith."

—Library Journal

“William Ryan brilliantly captures the eerie paranoia of Stalinist Moscow, which serves as an endlessly fascinating background for his compelling tale. This is a non-stop page-turner and a remarkable debut."

—David Liss, author of The Devil’s Company

Library Journal

In spite of his stellar detecting, Capt. Alexei Korolev, first introduced in the well-received The Holy Thief, lives on tenterhooks because Stalinist Russia in 1937 is a paranoid's worst nightmare. A midnight knock on his door leads not to exile in Siberia but to a film set in Odessa, where the secret girlfriend of a highly placed official has committed suicide. Or maybe not. As Korolev investigates, his steps are dogged by the recent famine, Ukrainian nationalists, criminal cousins, and movie stars. Even writer Isaac Babel makes an appearance as a screenwriter. VERDICT Ryan's prodigious research is crafted into an intense tale marked by Korolev's yearning to do an honest job of criminal investigation without drawing attention to his essentially ethical and religious nature (a no-no in the atheistic Soviet Union). Ryan's main characters are strong and believable, the dialog is crisply idiomatic, and Odessa's cityscape is grimly foreboding. Ryan's Korolev is on a brilliant trajectory to join the ranks of respected European detectives. Sure to appeal to fans of Martin Cruz Smith. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/11; 75,000-copy first printing; library marketing.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Kirkus Reviews

In Stalinist Russia, a smart cop knows just how dangerous it is to be a smart cop. Alexei Karolev, senior detective in Moscow's CID in 1937, has earned himself a reputation for competence and discretion he often wishes he hadn't. The discretion part is what Karolev on his gloomy days--of which he has a fair share--views with particular alarm, since it's earned him the attention of certain shivery personages high in the Communist Party. These are people to whom all publicity is bad publicity, and for whom Karolev has become the go-to guy whenever there's a sticky situation like this one: On a movie set near Odessa, a young woman commits suicide, a young and beautiful party member famously connected to a super-powerful party member. Nikolai Ezhov, Commissar of State Security and head of the dreaded NKVD, has reason to believe that the young woman had help shuffling off her mortal coil. Ezhov wants Karolev to travel to Odessa to sort things out but without seeming to do so--that is, to catch a murderer without actually conducting an investigation. It's a minefield of a mission, but, as Karolev knows full well, failure is never an option with the Ezhovs of the Party, their desk drawers brimming with one-way tickets to Siberia. Though he's not quite as fully realized as Stuart Kaminsky's Porfiry Rostnikov, the appealing Karolev in his second appearance (The Holy Thief, 2010) invites comparison to him. That's high praise indeed.