Red Ink / Greg Dinallo

Nikolai Katkov is a freelance journalist in Moscow, short on work and money, an ex-political prisoner pushing 40 and probably an alcoholic to boot. The mysterious murder of an Interior Ministry bureaucrat promises him a big story: Was the victim about to blow a whistle? Was he involved in smuggling money out of Russia? Hunting down leads, dogged Niko is soon followed, threatened by local mafiya types, thrown in jail and shot at. He loses his story to an ambitious young reporter possibly allied to a devious Moscow Militia officer, only to be contacted by brassy Gabriella Scotto, a U.S. Treasury agent hot on the money-laundering trail of a Russian-born American billionaire, a case that ties in directly with Niko’s lost story.