Book description
Easter, 1872. Fires burn in St Petersburg, a prelude to the
revolutionary turmoil that will shake Russia a generation later. As
the springtime thaw begins, a body rises to the surface of the Winter
Canal. Following an anonymous tip-off, magistrate Porfiry Petrovich is
drawn into an investigation of the radical intellectuals who seek to
fan the flames of revolution. In the meantime, junior magistrate Pavel
Pavlovich Virginsky plays a dangerous game of his own. Following a
chance meeting with a man he suspects of being an arsonist, he
volunteers to infiltrate a terrorist cell. But the young man's
loyalties appear divided, his motives conflicted. Will he track down
the killers, or to use his position as a magistrate to further a cause
with which he sympathises? The issue comes to a head in a shocking and
violent confrontation between two generations. The Cleansing Flames is
the fourth book in R. N. Morris's acclaimed series featuring the
investigator from Crime and Punishment.
Born in Manchester in 1960, R. N. Morris now lives in North
London with his wife and two young children. The Cleansing Flames is
the latest in a series of St Petersburg novels revolving around the
character of Porfiry Petrovich. Taking Comfort was published by
Macmillan under the name Roger Morris in 2006.
