‘An intelligent and atmospheric thriller… An accomplished debut.’ Thomas Waugh

Wicklow, 1976.

The dramatic death of Countess Irina Bratinsky, a well-connected dealer in Fabergé jewellery, becomes international news. But why are the Irish, French and Russian police so interested in her death?

For journalist Tom O’Brien it’s an opportunity to advance his career as he exposes the countess’s secrete life of espionage and crime.

Tom meets Irina’s granddaughter Olga – and they retrace Irina’s steps from revolutionary Russia to war torn France.

Inexorably they are drawn into the search for a missing family heirloom – a mystery which has already claimed three lives. When Irina’s long lost brother Pavel emerges from the gulag as one of the most ruthless criminals in Brezhnev’s Russia he has vengeance on his mind rather than reconciliation.

In their search for answers Tom and Olga confront Pavel in the ruins of Irina’s ancestral home outside Saint Petersburg. The question is: will they survive?

Jim Loughran lives in Dublin. The Bratinsky Affair is his first novel.