It is winter 1943 and the once victorious armies of the Third Reich are on the retreat, burning, slaughtering and destroying everything in their path. Under the command of Captain Josef Kleiser, an SS unit massacres the villagers of Prokev. But seventeen-year-old Anatole Boniak survives, and taking refuge in the hills, he conceives a deep and brooding hatred for the SS Captain. It is an obsession that will end in a violent confrontation and colour the Russian snows with the crimson stain of blood. Born and brought up in Hertfordshire, Shaun Hutson now lives and writes in Buckinghamshire where he has lived since 1986. Having made his name as a horror author with bestsellers such as Spawn, Erebus, Relics and Deathday (acquiring the nicknames 'The Godfather of Gore' and 'The Shakespeare of Gore' in the process) he has since produced a number of very dark urban thrillers such as Lucy's Child, Stolen Angels, White Ghost and Purity .