Cleansing Flames

Easter, 1872. St Petersburg in flames. The fires are 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.

Meanwhile junior magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky plays a dangerous game.

Following a chance meeting with a man he suspects of being an arsonist, Virginsky volunteers to infiltrate a terrorist cell.

But the young man’s loyalties appear divided, his motives conflicted.

Will he track down the killers, or use his position as a magistrate to further a political cause with which he sympathises?

Two generations come head to head in a shocking and violent confrontation.

Shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, The Cleansing Flames is the fourth book in R. N. Morris’s acclaimed series featuring Porfiry Petrovich. It brings the first quartet of books to a poignant and dramatic finale.