Shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger 2023

Nature is reclaiming Chernobyl. But the past is radioactive. . .

In a village close to Chernobyl, detectives Joseph Melnyk and Galina Novak uncover a man's mutilated body hanging from a building. All clues left at the scene of the crime point to a double homicide that took place on the very night that the nuclear power plant exploded.

Doubtful of the abilities of the Ukrainian police, the murdered man's father, a Moscow mafia boss, summons Rybalko, a Russian police officer of dubious morals, to conduct a parallel investigation to find and execute his son's killer. Rybalko goes to Ukraine and recovers the corpse, which no-one has dared to touch because of its radioactive contamination.

Good Reasons to Die is a breath-taking thriller set in a dislocated Ukraine where armed conflicts, economic collapse and ecological demands are interwoven with the exhilarating hunt to find a deranged serial killer.