Christmas Day, 1943. In Arisaig, in western Scotland, the body of beautiful, well-connected Polish SOE agent Krystina Kowolska is found in the gardens of the country house where she’s been preparing for a vital mission to France.
The question is, was she already dead when she was hanged?
Two days later, resistance double agent, Investigator Jan Kalisz of the Warsaw Kripo is flown to Britain where Winston Churchill himself tasks him with finding Krystina’s killer, before the cracks in Britain’s alliance with Poland become fractures.
Yet Arisaig is a place of secrets where everyone is a trained killer, and Kalisz discovers that Krystina had her demons and her enemies.
Was she the hero her record suggests or the traitor the whispers hint at?
Blood Vengeance by Douglas Jackson is published in paperback on 5 February, 2026. It’s the third novel in his Warsaw Quartet.
You may be interested in reading Living in the minds of monsters, Douglas’s feature about the background to an earlier novel in the quartet.
See what other historical fiction is coming out in 2026 in our summary of 120 books published this year.
