Black Sun

For fans of Red Sparrow and Child 44 comes a chilling and cinematic thriller set in 1961 in one of the most secretive locations in Soviet history. Ten days before the test of largest nuclear device in history, a KGB officer must investigate the murder of one of the architects of the bomb, and unravel a conspiracy that could set the world on fire.

It is the dawn of the 1960s. In order to investigate the gruesome death of a brilliant young physicist, KGB officer Major Alexander Vasin must leave Moscow for Arzamas-16, a top-secret research city that does not appear on any map.
There he comes up against the brightest, most cutthroat brain trust in Russia who, on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev himself, are building a nuclear weapon with 3,800 times the destructive potential of the Hiroshima bomb. RDS-220 is a project of such vital national importance that, unlike everyone else in the Soviet Union, the scientists of Arzamas-16 are free to think and act, live and love as they wish...as long as they complete the project and prove to their capitalist enemies that the USSR now commands the heights of nuclear supremacy.
With intricately plotted machinations, secrets and surveillance, corrupt politicos and puppet masters in the Politburo, and one devastating weapon, Owen Matthews has crafted a timely, terrific, and fast-paced thriller set at the height--and in the heart--of Soviet power.

OWEN MATTHEWS was born in London in 1971. He began his career as a foreign correspondent in Budapest, Sarajevo and Belgrade during the Bosnian civil war and was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau Chief from 2006-2012. He has worked for a number of publications including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Guardian, Observer, Independent, and others. His books include Stalin's Children, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Orwell Prize for political writing, and selected as one of the Books of the Year by The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator.