Moskva

At a New Year’s Eve party held at the British embassy in Moscow in December 1985, British Army intelligence officer Tom Fox, the hero of Grimwood’s entertaining thriller debut, meets the ambassador’s unhappy 15-year-old stepdaughter, Alex Masterson. After Tom notices suspicious scarring on the girl’s wrists, he jokingly gives her advice on how to properly commit suicide. His words come back to haunt him a week later when Alex disappears. Her stepfather, Sir Edward, is reluctant to tell the Soviet authorities she’s gone missing, hoping she’ll return on her own. Tom’s feelings of guilt about his possible part in the family’s trauma, as well as his guilt over his daughter Becca’s recent death in a car crash (which may not have been an accident), lead him to search for Alex on his own. Grimwood (The Last Banquet) eventually ties that plot into the gripping opening teaser—the discovery of the corpse of a preteen boy with a severed finger near Red Square. Despite many improbable narrow escapes and an underdeveloped lead, Martin Cruz Smith fans will be pleased. [em]Agent: Jonny Geller, Curtis Brown. (July) [/em]