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Black sun : a novel / Owen Matthews.

By: Matthews, Owen [author.].
Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Doubleday, [2019]Copyright date: ©2019Edition: First edition.Description: 305 pages ; 24 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9780385543408; 0385543409.Subject(s): Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoĭ bezopasnosti -- Employees -- Fiction | 1953-1985 | Physicists -- Crimes against -- Soviet Union -- Fiction | Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction | High-altitude nuclear explosions -- Fiction | FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense | FICTION / Historical / General | FICTION / Thrillers / Espionage | Soviet Union -- History -- 1953-1985 -- Fiction | Soviet UnionGenre/Form: Detective and mystery fiction. | Fiction. | History. | Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction. | Historical fiction. | Detective and mystery fiction. | Thrillers (Fiction) | Novels.Additional physical formats: Online version:: Black sun
Contents:
The city that doesn't exist -- Burned and blinded -- Scoured, melted and blown away -- I am become death.
Summary: "A chilling and cinematic thriller set in 1961 in one of the most secretive locations in Soviet history. Ten days before the test of largest nuclear device in history--the Tsar Bomba--a KGB officer must investigate the murder of one of the architects of the bomb, and unravel a conspiracy that could set the world on fire"--Summary: 1961, Arzamas-16, a top-secret research city that does not appear on any map. RDS-220 is a project of such vital national importance that, unlike everyone else in the Soviet Union, the scientists of Arzamas-16 are free to think and act, live and love as they wish-- as long as they complete the project, and build the most powerful nuclear device ever known. When a young physicist is found dead, KGB officer Major Alexander Vasin is sent to investigate. It is a city full of secrets-- including one that could extinguish all human life on the planet. -- adapted from jacket
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Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Book Book Voorhees Fiction Adult F Mat (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 05000010511199
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

" Black Sun is fascinating and has fearsome authenticity."
--Frederick Forsyth, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Thrilling and suspenseful."
--Simon Sebeag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs

"To call the novel chilling is an understatement."
--Booklist (starred review)

It is the dawn of the 1960s. In order to investigate the gruesome death of a brilliant young physicist, KGB officer Major Alexander Vasin must leave Moscow for Arzamas-16, a top-secret research city that does not appear on any map.
There he comes up against the brightest, most cutthroat brain trust in Russia who, on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev himself, are building a nuclear weapon with 3,800 times the destructive potential of the Hiroshima bomb. RDS-220 is a project of such vital national importance that, unlike everyone else in the Soviet Union, the scientists of Arzamas-16 are free to think and act, live and love as they wish...as long as they complete the project and prove to their capitalist enemies that the USSR now commands the heights of nuclear supremacy.
With intricately plotted machinations, secrets and surveillance, corrupt politicos and puppet masters in the Politburo, and one devastating weapon, Owen Matthews has crafted a timely, terrific, and fast-paced thriller set at the height--and in the heart--of Soviet power.

The city that doesn't exist -- Burned and blinded -- Scoured, melted and blown away -- I am become death.

"A chilling and cinematic thriller set in 1961 in one of the most secretive locations in Soviet history. Ten days before the test of largest nuclear device in history--the Tsar Bomba--a KGB officer must investigate the murder of one of the architects of the bomb, and unravel a conspiracy that could set the world on fire"--

1961, Arzamas-16, a top-secret research city that does not appear on any map. RDS-220 is a project of such vital national importance that, unlike everyone else in the Soviet Union, the scientists of Arzamas-16 are free to think and act, live and love as they wish-- as long as they complete the project, and build the most powerful nuclear device ever known. When a young physicist is found dead, KGB officer Major Alexander Vasin is sent to investigate. It is a city full of secrets-- including one that could extinguish all human life on the planet. -- adapted from jacket

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Prologue The air-raid siren sounded at dawn. Its rising wail was relayed across the sleeping town by loudspeakers mounted on lampposts, in the corridors of dormitories and barracks, and in the entrance halls of laboratories and workshops. It reverberated from the abandoned church belfry that faced Lenin Square, sending flights of startled pigeons up into the gray October morning. The birds wheeled over the rooftops of the old town center, over the new parks and apartment buildings, over guard towers and the three concentric rings of barbed wire. Finally they flapped over the dark forest that encircled the secret city of Arzamas-16 like a sea. In the main machine hall, the whining lathes slowed to a whir. Banks of fluorescent lights snapped off, leaving the operators blinking in morning light that filtered through the glass roof. In the parachute workshop, needles nodded to a halt between the seamstresses' spread fingers. The women straightened stiffly, grateful for the weekly air-raid drill and an early end to their night shift. In the blueprint room, tousled young engineers swept Lucite rulers and set-squares off their drawing tables, rolled plans into long asbestos tubes, and clattered down the stairs toward a row of fireproof safes. Fifty meters below their feet, a squad of soldiers ran, crooked with sleep, to their battle stations outside the main warhead vault. White-coated men filed out of the bunker chatting, patting pockets for matches and cigarettes. Behind them they left orderly rows of lead canisters stacked in cubicles, a large steel hemisphere sprouting wires, vessels of dull metal as big as bathtubs. Once the last of the scientists had exited, the soldiers hauled the steel blast door shut behind them. Their commanding officer rolled the bolts home with a soft clang. Alone in its secret vault, deep in the bowels of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, the bomb they called RDS-220 stood alone in silence and darkness.   On his blood-soaked sheets, Fyodor Petrov did not stir. He heard the siren's wail as a rising swell on the furthest edge of his consciousness. All night he had been rafting across a sea of pain, rolled by nausea. Liquid fire was consuming his body. Now, Petrov saw light. He remembered that light has mass, and exerts pressure. A physical pressure, tiny but measurable. He seemed to feel its particles as they fell on the skin of his face, streaming toward him from the surface of the sun. He tried to rise against the light, but his young body would not obey him. He willed one hand into motion. It jerked spastically as it crawled up his torso. His face was stuck to his pillow. His fingers scraped at a tacky, fibrous mass under his cheek and raised a pinch to his unfocused eyes. His own blond hair, shed in the night, matted with blood and vomit. "But I can't die," Petrov heard his own voice argue. "If I die, I will never know." Petrov let his hand drop. Numb darkness spread over him. He dreamt of fire, consuming the world in a furious tornado. He saw the proud towers of the Kremlin torn from their foundations, disintegrating into ziggurats of dust. He saw boiling seas and bend­ing forests exploding into flame. The whole earth burning, at his command. The faces of his teachers, friends, and comrades rose before him. They were arguing among themselves, but he could not understand what they were saying. Lost deep inside himself, Petrov felt the out­side world dissolve. The flesh that had clung to him so tortuously all night finally fell away. He had become a spirit, rising vertiginously into space with a cold wind rushing on his face. Delivered at last into infinite peace, a billion stars inside his head blazed into light. The siren stopped. And with it, so did Fyodor Petrov's weak human heart.   Excerpted from Black Sun: A Novel by Owen Matthews All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

DEBUT "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," warned Robert Oppenheimer when the first atomic bomb exploded in 1945. Its awesome power led the Soviet Union to race to build the most lethal bomb. In 1961, at a secret site devoted to accomplishing this goal, Soviet scientists live with perks and comforts. Even so, a genius engineer dies from radiation, apparently a suicide. The KGB sends special agent Alexander Vasin to investigate, and though cooperation is absent--the lethal monster is set to blow in just days--Vasin's probing bears fruit. He theorizes that the engineer was killed because the chief scientist opposed his project. Can the chief scientist foil the KGB's meddling? The nugget of truth hidden in the conflict is a stunning surprise. Based on the lives of real dissident Soviets, this first novel by journalist and historian Matthews balances technothriller realism with human ambition, greed, and, ultimately, love. In a taut yet discursive style, this title resurrects the paranoia of the Soviet mind-set. VERDICT Fans of Jason Matthews's "Red Sparrow" series and Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 will relish this incendiary take on nuclear weapons and the people who made them.--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Publishers Weekly Review

In 1961, a fearsome new bomb is under development at Arzamas-16, a secret city deep within the Soviet Union, the setting for British author Matthews's intriguing first novel, loosely based on a true story. Nine days before the nuclear device, which is capable of indescribable destruction, is to be tested for the first time, Fyodor Petrov, a brilliant young physicist working on the project, turns up dead from radiation poisoning. KGB investigator Alexander Vasin is dispatched from Moscow to determine whether Petrov was murdered and, if so, why. Matthews (Stalin's Children) makes the most of this promising setup for a while, as Vasin navigates the insular politics and unspoken rules of Arzamas. He soon finds that the residents and the scientists at the bomb-making facility tend to close ranks in the face of outside scrutiny. Unfortunately, about midway through, the plot starts to take too many twists and turns. Readers looking for a historical re-creation and unusual locale-a city that exists on no maps, populated by a curious cast of characters-will welcome this promising if flawed entrant to the thriller genre. Agent: Toby Mundy, Toby Mundy Assoc. (U.K.). (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Beginning with The Day of the Jackal (1971), Frederick Forsyth, investigative journalist, ace RAF pilot, and sometime spy, helped redefine the modern thriller and set the standard for lightning-pace action, supercool characters, and authentic details, no doubt culled from his personal experiences. His endorsement of fellow journalist Matthews' totally immersive debut for its fearsome authenticity raises the reader's expectations, and Matthews delivers. To call the novel chilling is an understatement. It's set in 1961, in the depths of the Cold War, in the brutal winter of a remote Russian top-secret research city, with scientists working on a bomb that, ironically, could set the world's atmosphere on fire. KGB officer Major Alexander Vasin arrives to investigate the murder of one of the key men working on the project, on the orders of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. If you think you already know about the Soviet drive for world dominance via nuclear supremacy and the extent to which it was enforced by brutality, secrets, and surveillance but foiled by ideological conflict and a corrupt Politburo, think again. This city, which did exist, although not to be found on any map, and the RDS-220 device . . . well, let Matthews tell you the story. Forsyth claims his wife told him to quit writing because he was too old to travel to dangerous places. Fortunately, there are brilliant new, informed tellers of tales following in his wake.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A murder investigation in a supersecret Soviet city reveals a number of surprises.Fyodor Petrov dies miserably and alone in a "city that does not exist," where Soviet scientists and engineers secretly develop nuclear arms. Arzamas-16 is a fairyland within the grim reality of Soviet Russia: Consumer goods are freely available, subversive literature is openly read, and even the local KGB defers to the agenda of the cadre of scientists who work there. But Petrov's death sets off alarms, and Alexander Vasin, an investigator in "Special Cases," a quasi-independent branch of the KGB, is sent to nose around. Petrov was working on RDS-220, a superbomb, larger than any bomb previously developed anywhere, a project headed by professor Adamov, the de facto ruler of Arzamas-16. Petrov's death has been ruled a suicide by Gen. Zaitsev, who heads the local security forces; he resents Vasin's investigation and over time hampers it somewhat, but Vasin nevertheless manages to uncover good reason to doubt the suicide scenario and pursues his investigation, to the discomfort of a number of individuals. Matthews is especially adept at limning the bureaucratic infighting and political double-dealing that permeate Soviet society, but Vasin is able to cut through much of this, thanks in part to the power wielded by his boss, Gen. Orlov, and in the course of his inquiry learns quite a bit about nuclear weapons and the projection of power and deterrence. In Arzamas-16, politics and physics are inextricably entwined, as the investigation slowly reveals, and though the murder mystery solution is a long time coming, the depiction of the forces and behaviors animating Soviet life are compelling. Vasin, Adamov, Adamov's wife, Maria, and the scientists and functionaries of Arzamas-16 are well-constructed characters, and the persistence of history is a powerful tidal presence.Despite a somewhat sluggish plot, this thriller provides many pleasures. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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