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The Terioki crossing
Also published under the title, The Three Passions of Countess Natalya.
1916: and the old Russia was passing -leaving a welter of tension, confusion and fear. The little group of people who were eventually to meet on the ice of the Terioki Crossing were bound together by love, hate and the compulsive need to escape.
Stern, the English officer, a lonely misfit burdened with the guilt of his past, was the catalyst who brought them together. It was Stern who set Koltsov, the convict revolutionary, on his path to power. Stern who discovered the secrets of Natalya Alexandrovna, and in discovering her passion became a victim of her icy beauty. It was Stern who returned to Petrograd when the revolution had erupted, determined to save Natalya if he could.
1916: and the old Russia was passing -leaving a welter of tension, confusion and fear. The little group of people who were eventually to meet on the ice of the Terioki Crossing were bound together by love, hate and the compulsive need to escape.
Stern, the English officer, a lonely misfit burdened with the guilt of his past, was the catalyst who brought them together. It was Stern who set Koltsov, the convict revolutionary, on his path to power. Stern who discovered the secrets of Natalya Alexandrovna, and in discovering her passion became a victim of her icy beauty. It was Stern who returned to Petrograd when the revolution had erupted, determined to save Natalya if he could.
350 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Alan Fisher
5 books1 followerAlan Fisher was converted to books when he was doing National Service and had time on his hands.
Back in civilian life, he worked as a clerk in an underwriting syndicate in Lloyds, as a porter at London University, as a clerk in Paddington General Hospital. He attended night school and entered teacher training. Teaching history in secondary schools in Sussex and Kent, he later gained a degree from the Open University and a postgraduate diploma from Sussex --but feels he learned far more from reading Arthus Koestler. The Terioki Crossing was his first book.
Back in civilian life, he worked as a clerk in an underwriting syndicate in Lloyds, as a porter at London University, as a clerk in Paddington General Hospital. He attended night school and entered teacher training. Teaching history in secondary schools in Sussex and Kent, he later gained a degree from the Open University and a postgraduate diploma from Sussex --but feels he learned far more from reading Arthus Koestler. The Terioki Crossing was his first book.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 21, 2010
"For five years, since that expedition to the northern boundary, I've been doing dirty jobs in every stinking pest hole of India and Persia. Now I've been brought here to shore up bridges in the Karelian wilderness, and with convicts for labour. I think, sir, that I deserve to know why."
This is a pretty hard book to review, let alone recap the story, but I will say the blurb makes it sound a bit more romancey than it really is. All you need to know is the story begins in Petrograd, 1916 and revolves around attempt(s) to get certain persons safely out of Russia before a date with the firing squad. I won't reveal much details, but the final attempt was quite a nail-biter.
This is a pretty hard book to review, let alone recap the story, but I will say the blurb makes it sound a bit more romancey than it really is. All you need to know is the story begins in Petrograd, 1916 and revolves around attempt(s) to get certain persons safely out of Russia before a date with the firing squad. I won't reveal much details, but the final attempt was quite a nail-biter.
January 29, 2012
For the first half of the book I was thinking 4 stars but then around page 200 and on I couldn’t stop reading. And I loved it.
The title of this book is a little misleading. It makes you think that they are going to trudge through snow in the wild for pages on end in some kind of tale of survival. Not so.
The book follows the lives of three men and two women during the last days of the tsarist Russia and the start of the revolution, in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) from 1916 to 1918 I think.
There is the Countess, arrogant, cold beauty, true to her upbringing and constantly wondering if she can love. The English engineer, hunted by his past; the American merchant; the ambitious Finnish student; and the man who walked to Greece on a peregrination and came back an atheist, at the centre of the new Bolsheviks regime. There are more characters around them who get their own part in something like a big puzzle where lives influence others and old crimes have to be paid for sometime. I love the way the characters cross sometimes without knowing each other and then the author smoothly changes direction to follow the second.
I can’t say much without revealing what happens. But I’ll say that every character is very real and alive. And the author manages to explain how the revolution started, the main historical facts, without boring you with data or names, painting the atmosphere of fear and danger that surrounds them all the time. It’s a story of love, or mostly of loneliness for the lack of it.
This book shares with Zemindar that they both won the Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize and they are both OOP. A real shame on modern publishers.
The title of this book is a little misleading. It makes you think that they are going to trudge through snow in the wild for pages on end in some kind of tale of survival. Not so.
The book follows the lives of three men and two women during the last days of the tsarist Russia and the start of the revolution, in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) from 1916 to 1918 I think.
There is the Countess, arrogant, cold beauty, true to her upbringing and constantly wondering if she can love. The English engineer, hunted by his past; the American merchant; the ambitious Finnish student; and the man who walked to Greece on a peregrination and came back an atheist, at the centre of the new Bolsheviks regime. There are more characters around them who get their own part in something like a big puzzle where lives influence others and old crimes have to be paid for sometime. I love the way the characters cross sometimes without knowing each other and then the author smoothly changes direction to follow the second.
I can’t say much without revealing what happens. But I’ll say that every character is very real and alive. And the author manages to explain how the revolution started, the main historical facts, without boring you with data or names, painting the atmosphere of fear and danger that surrounds them all the time. It’s a story of love, or mostly of loneliness for the lack of it.
This book shares with Zemindar that they both won the Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize and they are both OOP. A real shame on modern publishers.
November 6, 2018
Decent pulp historical thriller set in 1917 Petrograd
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews