Marc Weitz

Through the Cold and Gray Marc Weitz

Journalist Sophie Cutler won't take no for an answer. On assignment in the old Soviet Union to investigate a secretive hospital, she discovers patients dying at an unusually high rate. The mystery leads her to uncover a plot far more sinister than she could have ever imagined.

Sophie has had a rough time lately. Her career is in ruins, another relationship in tatters, and her hard drinking has left her hanging on by a thread. The only things she has left is her talent and tenacity. When her editor gives her one last shot by sending her to Northern Europe to write about a clinic that helps pregnant women, she jumps at the opportunity.

Arriving in Helsinki in the dead of winter, the respected doctors rudely dismiss her as just a "girl journalist." But these doctors have offended the wrong girl journalist, and Sophie wonders what they don't want her to see. She doggedly pursues the story, finding out that the hospital has covered up several unexplained deaths, and none of the patients ever seem to get better.

The investigation takes her from Finland to Estonia by ship across the icy Baltic Sea, to digging up graves in a centuries-old cemetery in Latvia, and finally to an abandoned Soviet nuclear powerplant in Lithuania. The doctors stop at nothing to destroy her fragile reputation and discredit her story.

Can she hold it together long enough to figure out what these doctors are up to when no one believes her? Will they destroy her before she can expose their deadly secret?

Beautifully written, intricately plotted, and meticulously researched, Through the Cold and Gray is an extraordinary novel.