Archive 17

Stalin's most trustedsecret agent, the legendary Inspector Pekkala, is on his deadliest mission-onethat 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 thebrink of bankruptcy. To preserve his regime, Stalin orders a search for thelegendary missing gold of Tsar Nicholas II. For this task, he chooses Pekkala,the former investigator for the Tsar. To accomplish his mission, Pekkala willgo undercover, returning to Siberia and the nightmare of his own past, where hewas once a prisoner in the notorious Gulag known as Borodok.

Pekkala must infiltrate a gang of convicts still loyal to the Tsar who, it isrumored, know the whereabouts of the precious gold. He soon learns that thebest-kept secrets are those that no one even knows exist.

In the brutal frozen fortress where his survival once made him a myth, hebegins to unravel the true identity of a murdered inmate, whose own mission toSiberia has lain buried for years deep within the mysterious Archive 17, wherelong-lost files obscure a shocking conspiracy that could decide the future ofthe Soviet Union itself. As more people die around him, Pekkala must decidewhere his true loyalties lie, or else take his place among the dead.

With the superb research and stunning suspense that are his trademarks, SamEastland delivers his most powerful Pekkala novel yet-the best in a mysteryseries riveting readers and reviewers alike.

Sam Eastland lives in the UnitedStates and the United Kingdom. He is the grandson of a London police detectivewho served in Scotland Yard's famous "Ghost Squad" during the 1940s. He iscurrently at work on his next Pekkala novel, which Bantam will publish in 2011.