Owen Matthews & White Fox

Owen Matthews, author of White Fox, was recently guest author for an event hosted by Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen. You can still order copies of White Fox through the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/item/Tjsi1wmychPCBqcs3B6tVw

Here’s the description of White Fox.

A page-turning thriller about two competing KGB operatives on a race across Russia and against time to uncover the devastating truth behind the assassination of JFK.

1963. In a desolate Russian penal colony, the radio blares the news of President Kennedy’s death. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin’s new post as director of a gulag camp in the middle of a frozen tundra is far from a promotion. This is where disgraced agents, like Vasin, are sent to disappear and die quietly. But when tensions in the camp mount and a violent revolt breaks out, Vasin finds himself on the run with a mysterious prisoner holding the most dangerous secret in the world: who ordered the murder of President Kennedy.

In a breathless chase that leads them throughout the Soviet Union, from the barren Siberian wastelands, to the stunning halls of the Catherine Palace, and into the gritty streets of Leningrad and Moscow, Vasin must stay one step ahead of the deadliest spy and police organizations in the world, and keep the most wanted man in Russia alive. The journey will push Vasin’s loyalty, morality, and patriotism to the limit, until he faces the ultimate choice: fall in line, or die fighting the system.

With masterly storytelling that weaves together a moment of explosive history with the cutthroat machinations of Soviet politics, Owen Matthews’s White Fox captures the paradigm-shifting assassination from a unique Soviet point of view. This is a page-turning thriller across Russia, where characters facing impossible odds are forced to decide among truth, justice, and all-out war.


OWEN MATTHEWS reported on conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and Ukraine, and was Newsweek‘s bureau chief in Moscow. He is the author of the Black Sun Trilogy, including Black Sun, Red Traitor, and White Fox, and is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Stalin’s ChildrenGlorious Misadventures, and An Impeccable Spy.


Enjoy the conversation with Owen Matthews and Barbara Peters.