Posts by gweccles:
Corruption of Power
December 29th, 2015
Ukraine is only the opening gambit, so far as the Russian President is concerned. With his sights set on territorial expansion and undeterred by the prospect of a new Cold War, he intends first to shift Russia’s economic focus towards the East in order to shield the country from the reprisals that his next move is sure to provoke.
The President delegates to his Prime Minister the redeployment of Russia’s vast energy resources, a vital component of his strategy. But when plans for a pipeline to run through Turkmenistan and Afghanistan tilt off-course, it threatens to spread the current conflagration in the Middle East right up to Russia’s own borders.
Against a background of political corruption, state-sponsored terrorism and increased Taliban insurgency, the President turns to independent troubleshooter ALEX LEKSIN whose investigations take him from Moscow into one of the world’s most sinister countries, right at the heart of Central Asia.
Initially his enquiries reveal nothing to cause alarm. Other factors, though, suggest otherwise: wherever Leksin goes, someone tries to kill him; people in a position to help him are assassinated; and information turns out to be misinformation. And when at last he discovers the truth, he finds himself unsure of whom he can trust as the stakes get frighteningly higher.
THE OLIGARCH: A THRILLER
October 29th, 2012
Following his controversial election for a third term amid widespread protests and allegations of vote rigging, the Russian President is determined to destroy the oligarchs before they destroy him. When the global economic meltdown decimates their wealth, the President seizes this chance to demolish their power base. His greatest opponent – Anton Blok, owner of the mighty Tyndersk Kombinat – has a secret agenda and faces far more than just financial ruin as his empire threatens to fall apart, and the President knows that his old enemy will stop at nothing to avoid catastrophe. With battlelines drawn, he turns to Alex Leksin, a British business troubleshooter of Russian descent, to thwart Blok’s plans. Against the challenge of hostile Arctic conditions, Leksin must tread a dangerous path through a labyrinth of corruption, terrorism and obfuscation until the exciting and unexpected denouement takes place in Russia’s northernmost seaport.
Set in Moscow, Ingushetia (Chechnya’s neighbour), and Tyndersk, a Siberian mining town inside the Arctic Circle and geographically cut off from the rest of Russia, this thriller’s plot twists and turns within an authentic and disturbing background.
