I’ve written a couple of articles about the background to my new book, Death of a Princess.
The first begins:
“In 1879 a group of eleven young people descended on the quiet Russian spa town of Lipetsk, over 700 miles south of St Petersburg. The ten men and one woman stood out from the geriatric invalids who comprised the resort’s usual visitors, thanks to their youth, physical fitness and good looks.
They posed as patients, even taking time out to lie in baths filled with Lipetsk’s famous healing mud. But they weren’t here for their health. They believed it was Russia that was sick. And they saw it as their mission to cut out the cancer that was destroying their country. The name of that cancer was Tsar Alexander II…”
You can read the rest here in Aspects of History.
The second article is more about the writing of the novel. You can read it here, in Crime Time.