The Christmas Egg

Book excerpt: Just before Christmas, Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale is called to a drab, gloomy flat off Islington High Street, where the body of an elderly woman has been discovered. But this is no ordinary corpse - it is that of Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled Russia after the Revolution, and had existed in terror of being discovered ever since. Though she lived modestly, there is evidence that she had a small hoard of valuable jewellery and objets d'art from her life before - items which are now missing. With the suggestion of a robbery before him, Nightingale must investigate the mysterious life and death of the princess...