Moscow Underground by Catherine Merridale

 

Moscow Underground by Catherine Merridale.

Published 14th August 2025 by Fontana.

From the cover of the book:

Moscow, 1934.

Moscow's glittering new subway is under construction at last. The first line will run through the centre of the city, cutting deep through Moscow soil. But futures cannot be created without digging up the past. Though Russia's leaders want to build a glorious Soviet capital, what holds them in a fatal grip is history: old mud and bones.

Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment on the road to the Show Trials. He is also someone who needs to keep his head down. His artist father was once the darling of the revolutionary avant-garde, a painter whose work could inspire devotion and great sacrifice. But now his dreams are out of place, too loud and red in Stalin's world of sterile rules and rubber stamps.

Anton is dragged into a murder case. A prominent archaeologist, working alongside the subway dig, has been killed in a deserted mansion. Though Anton doesn't want the job, his former lover, Vika, who is now a powerful member of the secret police, browbeats him into paying a visit to the site with her. Against his better judgement he is drawn to follow though, embarking on investigations that will almost certainly get him killed.

Deep underground, he finds a priceless secret that could genuinely unlock the future but links him to a vicious internecine fight for power in the young Soviet state. In the process, he is forced to reconsider the history he shares with Vika and the bonds that bind them both.

Moscow Underground is a sweeping novel of life, death and politics in the quicksand world of Stalin's tyranny.

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Moscow, 1934. In the run up to the Workers' First of May celebrations, Moscow is remaking itself to fit Stalin's vision, including the construction of an extensive metro system designed to put the West to shame.

Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, walking a fine line between upholding Soviet law and straying into sensitive political matters that might bring him unwelcome attention in these dangerous times. But Anton is reluctantly dragged into the murky power games of others when his former lover, Vika, a prominent member of the secret police, forces him to become involved in a murder investigation which is likely to get him killed.

Anton finds himself fighting for survival as he tries to discover why the body of an academic, who was advising on historical artifacts dug up during the metro construction, has been found bloody and battered in the ruins of a former mansion. Peril lurks at every turn, and Anton is constantly worried about the safety of himself, his friends, and his outspoken artist father - once a darling of the revolution and now perilously out of fashion with Stalin's ideals. What secrets lie deep underground in Moscow's mud, and who would be willing to kill in order to discover them?

In a luscious combination of detailed research, a setting that crackles with an appropriately tense atmosphere of time and place, glorious characterisation, and a fabulous story of love, death, past and future under Stalin's tyranny, Catherine Merridale's Moscow Underground is a triumph.

The story unfurls largely in 1934 as Anton does his best to get to the bottom of a deliciously layered murder mystery about why an unassuming archaeologist has been killed. Punctuating the slow-burn action, Merridale cleverly inserts flashbacks to the backstory of Anton and Vika's relationship during the chaos of war, which gradually explain the bonds that tie them together.

It is very difficult to convey quite how the weaving together of mystery, emotion, and insightful examination of the Soviet psyche of this era comes together to create such a compelling novel. Merridale catches you up in a sweeping historical crime story, wrapped up in oppressive Orwellian chill, with moments of real tenderness, and an unexpected touch of an adventurous Indiana Jones-esque quest for treasure.

Glorious themes echo throughout, wreathed in capricious political ideology, ambition, bureaucracy, corruption, paranoia, orthodoxy, and surveillance. The way Merridale explores Russia's complicated relationship with its past is fascinating, and I loved how she reflects this theme in the relationships of her characters too, particularly when it comes to Anton, Vika, and Anton's father. I adored how this novel pivots on the things that are unsaid - so much relies on the skilful way she has you reading between the lines. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this beautifully written novel, totally consumed from start to finish, and here for every brilliant twist and turn. There is scope here for a sequel that I would very much like to read too... more please!

Moscow Underground is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Fontana for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Catherine Merridale is an award-winning writer and broadcaster with an internationally acknowledged expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union. A pioneer of oral history in the region, her first major book, Night of Stone (Granta, 2000), won the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001. More recently, Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History (Allen Lane, 2013) won both the Wolfson History Prize and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2014. Ivan's War (Faber, 2005) tells the stories of ordinary Red Army soldiers in Europe's last great land-based war, while Lenin on the Train (Allen Lane, 2016) tracks Europe's collective and bungling responsibility for the Great October Revolution.