From the author of Black Sun, an electrifying new thriller set during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, seen from a bone-chilling vantage point: somewhere off the Florida coastline, trapped aboard the claustrophobic confines of an isolated Soviet submarine with open orders to fire its nuclear payload. For fans of Philip Kerr, Alan Furst, and Jason Matthews.
The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is chasing a white elephant: the long-rumored existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelon of Soviet power. In a wild goose chase that has Vasin engaged in high-stakes espionage against a rival State agency, he first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr.
As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines are ordered to make a covert run at the American blockade in the Caribbean--each sub carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads.
Critically acclaimed novelist Owen Matthews has crafted an incredibly taut thriller around one of the most treacherous moments in modern history, where the fate of the world rested with the itchy trigger finger of one lone Soviet naval officer, 100 meters under the sea, out of all contact with his commanders. OWEN MATTHEWS reported on conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and Ukraine and was Newsweek Magazine's Bureau Chief in Moscow from 2006-2016. He is the author of Black Sun (2019), the first book in the series of political thrillers featuring KGB major Alexander Vasin, and is also the author of several nonfiction books including Stalin's Children, Glorious Misadventures, and An Impeccable Sky.
