Having captured an armored train, Charlie and the ragtag private army he has recruited fight their way toward Siberia. Near Kazan, he hears rumors that the Tsar's gold reserves are in the city and that Glebov is also after them. He determines that he'll avenge Elizaveta and grab the gold in one swoop.
James Fleming is one of modern fiction's great stylists. His prose is marvelously robust and vivid, his plot breathtaking in its pace and excitement, and his protagonist, as the Independent said of the previous Doig novel, White Blood, is "the right kind of hero: virile, ruthless, adventurous."