Book excerpt: Global intrigue, espionage, and mystery from a thrilling new international voice. Max Anger is a man on the edge. The former fighter in an elite band of special-ops soldiers in Sweden, Anger is haunted by battle scars, a childhood spent in the Stockholm archipelago, and his own mysterious family past. Now behind a desk at Vektor, a think tank conducting research on Russia, he's met his match--and fallen in love--with fierce fellow operative Pashie Kovalenko. Like all of Vektor, she's set her sights on the tenuous future of her country. When Pashie goes missing in Saint Petersburg, Anger rushes headlong into a volatile Russia, where a new president is about to be elected in the midst of a technological revolution. At the movement's heart is a start-up Pashie had been investigating, one surrounded by rumors of organized crime and corruption. But the truth is more shocking than Anger could have ever expected. Now time is running out for Pashie. Racing through a storm of violence and deception, Anger gets ever closer to a sensational secret--and to the Russian madman with dreams of restoring one of the cruelest regimes in the history of the world.