Alpine Hunt

A novel about the harsh everyday life of wartime—about tangled human fates and the perilous service of nameless fighters who have been brought into an elite unit known as “Beria’s spetsnaz.”

May 1945. Soviet intelligence is trying to pick up the trail of a secret laboratory in the Alps, where the famed cybernetics expert Otto Klausen created a special machine-encryption system for the Third Reich. There is information that Klausen is already negotiating with the Americans: he is willing to hand over his developments in exchange for security and a new biography. This must not be allowed—both the technology and its creator must be seized or eliminated. The first Soviet group sent to search for it vanished in the mountains without a trace. Then Beria tasks the scout Maxim Shelestov’s intelligence officers with the operation. His men infiltrate the retreating German unit and advance with it toward the border, not far from where Klausen is hiding. Shelestov has not yet realized that his detachment will have to face the thugs of several enemy special services at once…

“[This series is] good in that it carries a correct key idea: in Lavrentiy Beria’s NKVD they knew how to trust people, because their commissar himself knew how to trust. The story of Major Shelestov’s group is similar to the real story of a major Abwehr agent—the former staff-captain of the Tsarist Army Nelidov—who ended up in the Lubyanka in September 1939. Against the backdrop of Nelidov’s story, Maxim Shelestov’s adventures and those of his comrades described in this novel seem even more plausible.” – S. Kremlev

The total print run of A. Tamonikov’s books is over 10 million copies.