Murder in Moscow

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.