Snowdrops

Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and the CWA Gold Dagger 2011

Nick Platt is a British lawyer working in early-2000s Moscow, a city of hedonism and desperation where secrets, and corpses, come to light when the snows thaw. Nick doesn’t ask too many questions about the shady deals he works on—he’s too busy enjoying the surreally sinful nightlife Moscow has to offer.

Riding the subway on a balmy September day, he rescues two willowy sisters, Masha and Katya, from a would-be purse snatcher. Soon Nick begins to feel something for Masha that he is pleased to think is love. Then the sisters introduce him to their aged aunt, Tatiana, the owner of a valuable apartment. Before summer arrives, Nick will make disturbing discoveries about his job, his lover and, most of all, himself.

Snowdrops is a riveting story of love and moral freefall. Taut and intense, it has a momentum as irresistible to the reader as the moral danger that first enchants, then threatens to overwhelm, its narrator. In Moscow, as Nick’s friend Steve warns him, “there are no love stories. There are no business stories. There are only crime stories.”