Moscow, Midnight
Government minister Patrick Macready has been found dead in his flat. The coroner rules it an accident, a sex game gone wrong.
Jon Swift is from the old stock of journos – cynical, cantankerous and overweight – and something about his friend’s death doesn’t seem right. Then days after Macready’s flat is apparently burgled, Swift discovers that his friend had been researching a string of Russian government figures who had met similarly ‘accidental’ fates.
When the police refuse to investigate further, Swift gets in touch with his contacts in Moscow, determined to find out if his hunch is correct. Following the lead, he is soon drawn into a violent underworld, where whispers of conspiracies, assassinations and double-agents start blurring the line between friend and foe.
But the truth will come at a price, and it may cost him everything.
Jon Swift is from the old stock of journos – cynical, cantankerous and overweight – and something about his friend’s death doesn’t seem right. Then days after Macready’s flat is apparently burgled, Swift discovers that his friend had been researching a string of Russian government figures who had met similarly ‘accidental’ fates.
When the police refuse to investigate further, Swift gets in touch with his contacts in Moscow, determined to find out if his hunch is correct. Following the lead, he is soon drawn into a violent underworld, where whispers of conspiracies, assassinations and double-agents start blurring the line between friend and foe.
But the truth will come at a price, and it may cost him everything.
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Reviews
A contemporary, topical murder mystery that marks John Simpson's emphatic return to fiction
An entertaining, often funny account of the murder of an insignificant MP, the solution to which eventually leads to Moscow. The novel's pleasure lies with its voluble louche narrator, Jon Swift, a down-on-his-luck television presenter who was friends with the dead politician
An engaging yarn with a strong, sometimes mischievous autobiographical element
This engaging, rip-roaring story about a TV reporter who investigates the death of a government minister friend reveals Simpson's quirkier, more mischievous side . . . told with a wry, tongue-in-cheek style that delights
Simpson knows his stuff, obviously, and his plotting is strewn with expert analysis of international affairs and insider knowledge of journalistic practice: all very entertaining