Fluke Kelso is a dissipated, middle-aged, former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a conference on newly-opened Soviet archives. Kelso is visited at his hotel by an old NKVD officer and bodyguard, who claims to have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal stroke. When historian Fluke Kelso learns of the existence of a secret notebook belonging to Josef Stalin he is determined to track it down, whatever the consequences. From the violent political intrigue and decadence of modern Moscow he heads north - to the vast forests surrounding the White Sea port of Archangel, and a terrifying encounter with Russia's unburied past.
