Alexandra Marinina’s gripping new novel is at once an action-packed psychological drama and a serious conversation about corruption in big-time sports.
Jump. Another jump. The cold steel of skates slices through the blue ice like lightning… Figure skating is a beautiful and graceful sport. Millions of people hold their breath as they watch our skaters perform.
And then, into this fairy-tale world, a cruel murder bursts like a dark shadow. Mikhail Valentinovich Boltenkov has been shot—the highest-category coach, a legendary man, a master who raised more than one champion. The body is found near the home of his colleague Valery Lamzin. Witnesses confirm: the coaches met before the murder, they quarreled and threatened each other… The case, as they say, is «in the bag.»
But Nastya Kamenskaya and her friends from Petrovka—Anton Stashis and Roman Dzyuba—have their own opinion on that. The truth opens before them about the inhumanity and cynicism that have soaked into the blue ice. The ice on which angels do not survive.