White Fox

This novel completes the Alexander Vasin trilogy. It is set in 1963, when news of John F. Kennedy's death crackles over the radio in a remote Soviet penal colony. Lieutenant Colonel Vasin has been given command of a labor camp on the frozen tundra, a posting that is less a promotion than a sentence. Disgraced intelligence officers are sent there to fade away unnoticed.

When unrest inside the camp erupts into open revolt, Vasin flees with a mysterious prisoner who knows who ordered the president's murder. Two rival KGB operatives are racing against time to expose the truth, and Vasin must stay ahead of the most dangerous spy and police agencies in the country while keeping this most wanted man alive. The chase takes them from the Siberian wilderness to the Catherine Palace and on to the streets of Leningrad and Moscow.

Vasin's loyalty, morality and patriotism are tested at every turn, and he eventually faces a choice between submitting to the system and dying in resistance against it. Owen Matthews approaches the assassination from a Soviet perspective, interweaving the event with the ruthless intrigue of Soviet politics. The result is a fast-moving thriller across Russia in which characters with little chance of success must decide between truth, justice and all-out war.