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Boris Starling has worked as a reporter on the Sun and the Daily Telegraph. His first book, Messiah, has been made into a mini-series on the BBC, for which Starling is the series creator. Starling studied at Cambridge and currently lives in London with his partner and their new daughter.

From the author of Messiah, Storm and Vodka comes a thrilling mystery set during the Great Fog of post-World War Two London, a time of secrets and intrigue.

At first, it seems the Great Fog has claimed another victim. A drunk, perhaps, wandering unsighted through Hyde Park and stumbling into the icy shallows of Long Water. But Max Stensness was stone cold sober when he died. And in the hours before his death, the young biochemist had claimed to be in possession of a secret that would change the world. Having traded MI5 for New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Herbert Smith thinks he has left the murky world of espionage behind him – until he begins retracing the final footsteps of Max Stensness. Suddenly he’s being tailed, and thinly veiled threats are issued–danger lurks at every turn in the investigation. The CIA, KGB and MI5 are all vying to get their hands on the dead man’s secret, and as the body count climbs, it’s clear there’s someone who will stop at nothing to claim it.

Publishers Weekly

At the start of this smart, intriguing puzzle from British author Starling (Vodka), Herbert Smith, "once of the British Army, latterly of MI5" and now a detective with "the Metropolitan Police's Murder Squad," draws the case of a drowned man found in a Hyde Park pond. Normally, this would be a rare occurrence, but it's 1952 and London is gripped in a fog so miasmic that stumbling into a pond can easily be written off as a simple accident. It's not, of course, and Smith's investigations bring him into contact with a scientist who possesses a secret that will change the future; a beautiful, blind police diver, Hannah Mortimer; several Russian spies; British turncoats; and a Nazi so reviled that even today his name evokes absolute evil. Where most thriller writers plumb the depths of imagination for their earth-shattering secrets, Starling does just the opposite by employing the reality of history. It's a difficult trick, but once again he pulls it off with panache. (Mar.)