Good Reasons to Die

Shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger 2023

'An excellent crime thriller with an explosive climax' Bill Todd, The Sun


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.