Angels in the Snow

A poignant and devastatingly accurate novel about life in Cold War Moscow, where ambition, espionage, sex and jealousy are rife in the diplomatic world.

A diplomatic posting in Moscow offers excitement and intrigue, a chance to go behind the Iron Curtain. But the reality is a community of Western diplomats and cynical journalists cut off from ordinary Muscovites and under constant surveillance by the KGB. In this alien land an American working for the CIA and a young Englishman at the British Embassy are gradually cracking under the strain of life in the Soviet capital, their lives inextricably associated with the Twilight Brigade – the defectors who play cat-and-mouse with the secret police.

The landmark first novel by Derek Lambert exposes the reality of life in post-Stalin Moscow, in which the tensions and hostility of the 1960s’ Soviet Union sometimes prove intolerable.

The landmark first novel by Derek Lambert exposes the reality of life in post-Stalin Moscow, in which the tensions and hostility of the 1960s’ Soviet Union sometimes prove intolerable.

‘[Derek Lambert’s] first novel, Angels in the Snow (1969), was the fruit of a year's posting in Moscow for the Daily Express. Lambert's ability to write taut dialogue and dramatic scenes encouraged a host of followers who, like him, came to realise that the espionage tale contained the essence of Cold War reality. With a ready eye for drama, which gave his journalism and fiction its air of authenticity, Lambert smuggled his incomplete manuscript out of Russia in a wheelchair when he was invalided home with suspected rheumatic fever. He finished it on his battered Olivetti typewriter in a flat over a grocer's shop in Ballycotton, Co Cork.’ Daily Telegraph

‘A novel of terrific atmosphere’ Daily Express

‘Excitingly real’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Mr Lambert has written an eminently readable and poignant documentary novel. I predict that we shall hear a great deal more about him’ Sunday Express