Angels in the Snow. Derek Lambert

The landmark first novel by acclaimed Cold War thriller writer Derek Lambert.Derek Lambert’s classic spy novel exposes the truth about the life of the Western community in post Stalin Moscow, and their existence in which tensions and hostility of the Soviet Union sometimes prove intolerable.An American working for the US embassy and the CIA, a young Englishman at the British Embassy gradually cracking under the strain of Moscow life, and a member of the Twilight Brigade. In an alien land their lives become inextricably joined in a vivid and tense story of diplomats, traitors, Soviet secret police and espionage.FROM DEREK LAMBERT’S OBITUARY IN THE TELEGRAPH:‘His first novel, Angels in the Snow (1969), was the fruit of a year's posting in Moscow for the Daily Express. It contains a vivid picture of the western community in the Soviet capital. Under constant surveillance and cut off from ordinary Muscovites, the cautious diplomats and cynical journalists are shown bored and lonely with only the solace of drink and sex.‘Its most touching portrait is of a drunken defector with a loving Russian wife, who was based on Len Wincott, a leader of the 1931 Invergordon naval mutiny. Lambert's ability to write taut dialogue and dramatic scenes encouraged a host of followers who, like him, came to realise that the espionage tale contained the essence of Cold War reality.‘With a ready eye for drama, which gave his journalism and fiction its air of authenticity, Lambert smuggled his incomplete manuscript out of Russia in a wheelchair when he was invalided home with suspected rheumatic fever. He finished it on his battered Olivetti typewriter in a flat over a grocer's shop in Ballycotton, Co Cork, and earned himself the then impressive sum of £10,000, which set him firmly on his career as a novelist.’‘A novel of terrific atmosphere’ Daily Express‘Excitingly real’ Sunday Telegraph‘Mr Lambert has written an eminently readable and poignant documentary novel. I predict that we shall hear a great deal more about him’ Sunday Express