Greco's Game

The story of former KGB colonel Aleksandr Talanov continues in the hotly-anticipated follow-up to USA Book News's Best Thriller of 2011, Department Thirteen. Greco's Game finds Talanov witnessing the brutal murder of his wife. Convinced the bullet was meant for him and wracked with guilt, he spirals downward on a path of self-destruction, hitting rock-bottom on the mean streets of Los Angeles. But in a seedy world ruled by the Russian mafia, all is not as it seems. Was her murder an accident, or was it a carefully-planned strategy? The answer lies in Greco's Game, a chess game played in 1619 that Talanov's old KGB chess instructor regarded as the most brilliant example of how to trap and kill an opponent. The question is: who was the target?