«It's Easter, 1872. Fires burn in St Petersburg, a prelude to the revolutionary turmoil that will shake Russia a generation later. As the springtime thaw begins, a body rises to the surface of the Winter Canal. Following an anonymous tip-off, magistrate Porfiry Petrovich is drawn into an investigation of the radical intellectuals who seek to fan the flames of revolution. In the meantime, junior magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky plays a dangerous game of his own. Following a chance meeting with a man he suspects of being an arsonist, he volunteers to infiltrate a terrorist cell. But the young man's loyalties appear divided, his motives conflicted. Will he track down the killers, or to use his position as a magistrate to further a cause with which he sympathises? The issue comes to a head in a shocking and violent confrontation between two generations. «The Cleansing Flames» is the fourth book in R.N. Morris' acclaimed series featuring the investigator from «Crime and Punishment».»

St Petersburg. 1870. A child factory worker is mysteriously abducted. A society beauty is sensationally murdered. Two very different crimes show up the deep fissures in Russian society of the late tsarist period. The first is barely noticed by the authorities. The latter draws the full investigative might of St Petersburg's finest, led by magistrate Porfiry Petrovich. The dead woman had powerful friends — including at least one member of the Romanov family — so when the tsar's notorious secret police becomes involved, it seems that both crimes may have a political — not to say revolutionary — aspect. A trail of missing children leads to a shocking discovery that takes Porfiry inside the Winter Palace for a confrontation with the Tsar himself. The usually incisive magistrate grows increasingly unsure what to believe, who to trust and how to proceed. His very life appears to be in danger, though from whom he can't be sure...

«An atmospheric mystery set in St Petersburg in the winter of 1867 sees detective Porfiry Petrovich taking his first murder case since Dostoevsky's «Crime and Punishment». When two frozen bodies are found in a park, he begins to suspect that the truth may be more complex than others wish him to believe, as his investigations lead him to a shocking discovery which reveals the city's darkest secrets. «A Gentle Axe» is utterly absorbing and tense from its dramatic opening through to its shocking climax.»