Holy Island is used as a backdrop in tense crime novel

Paul Aidan Richardson has written Icon and he hopes readers will enjoy the book.

In July 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, together with his family and loyal retainers were brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks.

The Romanov jewellery is recovered by Lenin’s Red Army, but a Russian Orthodox icon, Empress Alexandra’s last great comfort, is lost.

A century later, private investigator, Harry Caldwell, is commissioned to discover the icon’s whereabouts, only to find that he and his two friends, Sam and Geordie, are catapulted into a world of art forgery and death.

Paul said: “It’s amazing that it was only 100 years since Russia experienced such an upheaval – a revolution which left a legacy of death camps and political oppression.

“The world was rightly shocked at the slaughter of the Romanov children, yet very little was done to help. It was a time when many of the old order sought solace in their beliefs and the comforting presence of icons which depicted their religious history.

“I hope readers will enjoy the book and how the sad events in Russia found a solution on Holy Island.”

Icon can be bought in good book shops or via www.talulahpublishing.co.uk or www.aidanpublishing.co.uk

It is also available in eBook format.