Wicklow, 1976, and the dramatic death of Countess Irina Bratinsky, a well-connected dealer in Fabergé jewellery, becomes international news.
But why are the Irish, French and Russian police so interested in her death?
For journalist Tom O’Brien it’s an opportunity to advance his career as he exposes the countess’s secret life of espionage and crime.
Tom meets Irina’s granddaughter Olga and they retrace Irina’s steps from revolutionary Russia to war torn France.
Inexorably they are drawn into the search for a missing family heirloom – a mystery which has already claimed three lives.
When Irina’s long lost brother Pavel emerges from the gulag as one of the most ruthless criminals in Brezhnev’s Russia he has vengeance on his mind rather than reconciliation.
In their search for answers Tom and Olga confront Pavel in the ruins of Irina’s ancestral home outside St Petersburg. The question is: will they survive?
The Bratinsky Affair by Jim Loughran was published on 19 February, 2025.
There’s much more historical fiction in Historia’s round-up of over 160 books published this year.
