Book description
Foreign correspondent George Gerney, travelling to Moscow by train to
report for his newspaper on post-war changes there, finds himself in the
company of a pro-Soviet delegation from England. His aloof attitude
towards his fellow passengers receives a jolt, however, when one of them
is murdered in Moscow. He refuses to accept the official Russian
explanation of the crime and, better versed than most foreigners in
Soviet tactics of every kind, he does his own investigating - giving a
shrewd and often amusing picture of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was born
in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and
Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics
at London University. He was on the staff of
The Economist
for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London
News Chronicle
as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned
to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the
BBC’s Overseas Service.
After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure
novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized,
televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages.
He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds - which have included
Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the
Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry - and for
never repeating a plot.
Andrew Garve was a founder member and first joint secretary of the
Crime Writers’ Association.
