Londongrad

'Reggie Nadelson knows how to raise the hair on your arms, and she does it with the authority and sureness of a natural born writer.'GuardianLondongrad opens on the desolate fringes of New York City, where Brooklyn abuts on Queens and where planes heading for JFK fly in low over the Jamaica wetlands. Russian-American detective Artie Cohen is stopped by a frantic Russian child who leads him to a dead girl rocking on a swing in a derelict playground - wrapped from head to toe in silver duct tape, she soon becomes known as 'Mummy Girl'As Artie follows slender leads, disaster strikes as his friend Tolya's daughter goes missing. The trail leads to London - to Londongrad, emigre home to a quarter of a million Russians - oligarchs, City traders, restaurateurs, asylum seekers, the rich and not so rich, in their Little Russia at the heart of Britain's capital. Here, a new Cold War is played out against a setting of huge country houses and lavish flats, in restaurants and Orthodox churches and bars. In Londongrad, oligarchs buy football clubs, and plot to overthrow Vladimir Putin. But in Moscow itself that Artie must look for the answers, and there that he must face the greatest test of his loyalty . . . 'Cohen is a brilliant creation . . . [Nadelson's] writing is strikingly confident, with barely a word out of place.'Sunday Times