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Among other novels, Dan Smith is the author of The Child Thief, Red Winter and The Darkest Heart, which are also available from Pegasus Crime. He lives in Newcastle with his family. Find out more about Dan, his novels, and the places that inspire them at www.dansmithbooks.com.
Red Winter: A Novel
by Dan Smith
eBook
$11.49
$14.95
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ISBN-13:
9781605986609
- Publisher: Pegasus Books
- Publication date: 07/08/2014
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 416
- Sales rank: 104,300
- File size: 866 KB
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Delivering harrowing adventure and suspense set against an unforgiving landscape, the new novel by Dan Smith will leave you chilled to the bone . . .
1920, central Russia. The Red Terror tightens its hold. Kolya has deserted his Red Army unit and returns home to bury his brother and reunite with his wife and sons. But he finds the village silent and empty. The men have been massacred in the forest. The women and children have disappeared.In this remote, rural Russian community the folk tales that mothers tell their children by candlelight take on powerful significance, and the terrifying legend of Koschei, The Deathless One, begins to feel very real. Kolya sets out on a journey through dense, haunting forests and across vast plains against the bitter winter, in the desperate hope he will find his wife and two boys—and find them alive. But there are very dark things in Kolya's past. And, as he strives to find his family, there's someone—or something—following his trail . . .
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Publishers Weekly
★ 05/05/2014At the start of this pulse-pounder set in 1920 Central Russia from Smith (The Child Thief), Nikolai Levitsky, a deserter from the Red Army, returns home to the village of Belev, where everyone appears to be missing, including his wife and sons. When Nikolai does find one person, Galina Petrova, an elderly friend of his late mother, she tells him that Belev was attacked by Koschei (aka the Deathless One), a monster from children’s fairy tales. According to Galina, the Koschei took all the villagers, leaving behind one decapitated corpse. Nikolai’s search for his family across Russia exposes him to evidence of the futility of the conflict between the Reds and Whites. Luminous prose complements the compelling plot (e.g., “the low winter sun poured light through cloud and smoke and fire, reddening and casting a crimson glow across the yard and the field beyond, where the frost glistened red as if each crystal had been formed with the blood of men”). (July)
Booklist
Red Winter is filled with suspense, bloodshed, and vividly drawn characters, and offers a strong sense of the tragic arc of modern Russian history.”The Times (London)
A superbly shivery atmosphere.The Sunday Times (London)
Showing the same skills that he exercised in The Child Thief, Smith has fashioned a story of page-turning intensity.”Crimefictionlover.com
Once again Dan Smith has produced a first class historical thriller that will satisfy the most demanding of crime fans. Smith's prose is crisp, his sense of pace flawless, and his appreciation of the mundane terrors of warfare nothing short of masterly.Historical Novels Review (Editor's Choice)
Smith recreates the horrible atrocities and constant danger so vividly you can’t help but glance over your shoulder. Each character and incident is memorable, so much so that the day may be sweltering as you read, but the wintry chills make you shiver. Highly recommended.Kirkus Reviews
2014-06-05A deserter from the Red Army searches for his family in the woods of Russia.Patriotism turned Nikolai Levitsky into a soldier; idealism turned him into a revolutionary after the Great War. But, sick of the fighting among the Red, White, Green and Blue armies, and eaten with shame for having left his family unprotected, Nikolai put his identity papers and his uniform on a dead man and left his unit to return home. When he reaches his village, where he left his wife and two sons, he finds a deserted house and piles of corpses with red stars branded on their foreheads. An old woman, the only survivor of the recent raid on the village, raves about Koschei the Deathless—the villain of the skazkas, the fairy tales Nikolai grew up with—who’s left his devil’s mark all around him. Nikolai’s encounter with two young women seeking revenge against the man they also call Koschei makes Nikolai suspect that the Chekists, an elite band of terrorists who enforce Bolshevism, wiped out his village and are now looking for him. After he takes shelter with a fellow refugee and his daughter, Nikolai learns how dangerous his presence is to his cautious hosts and dreads that the identity he’s hidden so carefully will cause even further harm. As he follows the ever fainter hope that he’ll find his family, the skazkas of his childhood color his quest: A hero in disguise with both human and animal traveling companions faces adversity in search of redemption and his heart’s desire.Although the hero’s guilt becomes nearly as burdensome to the plot as to him, Smith (The Child Thief, 2013, etc.) adeptly builds both characterization and suspense in Nikolai’s race to find his family before his former comrades find him.