Book at Bedtime - Snowdrops - Episode 1

By A.D. Miller. Snowdrop: 1. An early-flowering bulbous plant,having a white pendent flower. 2. Moscow slang. A corpse that lies buried or hidden in the wintersnows, emerging only in the thaw. Nick Platt is an English lawyer living in Moscow during the Russian oil boom. Riding the subway on a September day, he rescues two sisters, Masha and Katya, from a would-be bag thief. Their world soon becomes his world too, and as winter envelopes the city, the sisters introduce him to Tatiana Vladimirovna, their aged aunt, who needs some help from the English lawyer. Platt is drawn into a complex web of deception and before the snows melt in spring, he will travel down to the Black Sea and the Arctic circle, and make disturbing discoveries about his job, his lover and, most of all, himself. Snowdrops is a tale of erotic obsession, self-deception and moral freefall. It is set in a land of hedonism and desperation, corruption and kindness, magical hideaways and debauched nightclubs; a place where secrets and corpses come to light when the snows thaw. "In Russia there are no business stories. And there are no political stories. There are no love stories. There are only crime stories." Nick sees a beautiful girl leaning against a pillar on the platform of a Moscow Metro station. But does he look at her longer than he should? Reader: Stephen Mangan Abridged by Jeremy Osborne Producer: Karen Rose A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.