January 1991. Leningrad is starving, freezing, and ready to explode. Crime is rampant. Soldiers roam the streets. Rumors of a coup whisper through every hallway.
Documentary filmmaker Kate Hennessey arrives for an international festival — but instead of gathering footage for her NYC course, she records something she was never meant to see: an officer with a scarred face speaking with a baby‑faced civilian in the hotel bar. Her guidebook warns her: No filming the military.
Then a terrified 17‑year‑old girl named Sveta confides that she fears she will be killed.
Hours later, Kate and Sveta are abducted by a drunken cab driver and left to die in a frozen cemetery. Kate escapes. Sveta does not.
Was the attack random? Was Sveta the target? Or was Kate?
As Kate investigates, she uncovers a hidden world of LGBTQ+ persecution, underground cafés, psychiatric “clinics,” and a police force willing to silence anyone who threatens the state. A scar‑faced KGB officer begins to follow her. A red‑haired soldier appears everywhere she goes. And when her hotel burns, Kate realizes someone wants her dead — and her footage destroyed.
With her videotapes strapped to her body, Kate flees Leningrad. But the danger she escaped has followed her home.
A gripping political thriller of surveillance, identity, and courage, The Matryoshka Murders is perfect for fans of international suspense, Cold War intrigue, and female‑
As well as a successful author, Kay Williams is a professional actress who has played a wide range of leading roles at theaters around the U.S. For several years, Kay worked behind-the-scenes with an independent filmmaker in New York, traveling with him to Leningrad in 1991 where she received the idea for The Matryoshka Murders. Anything could happen here, she thought, in this city at this desperate time.
Eileen “Jo” Wyman, Kay’s writing partner, helped organize photos and notes collected from the trip, and together they drafted a plot and wrote this thriller that begins in Russia and jumps across an ocean to New York City.
Eileen, known to friends as Jo, an amazing, talented woman, tragically passed away in 2013, just after The Matryoshka Murders was completed. Jo worked in radio-TV and began her writing career in comedy, crafting jokes for speech writers and comedians, humorous fillers for magazines, and captions for cartoonists. She loved humor—from punch line jokes to surreal comedy to wit and word play—filling file box after file box with her wry, pithy descriptions.
The authors’ move into the crime-ridden, sleazy Hell’s Kitchen of 1977 provided the catalyst for their award-winning thriller, Butcher of Dreams. Kay’s wide ranging acting credits and theater experience gave focus to this character/plot driven mystery that centers around the struggling 42nd Street repertory theater where much of the action takes place.
Kay is also a co-author of the comic romance One Last Dance:It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love, started by her journalist father Mardo Williams, and finished by her and her sister Jerri Lawrence. One Last Dance has won several awards, including an Ohioana Award (to Jerri and Kay) for writing and editing excellence.
Coming next (dedicated to Jo) - Part One of a Series: New York City, Collected Letters, 1956-57: Were We Ever That Young?, the hilarious, heart-breaking and hair-raising adventures of two starry-eyed girls from the Midwest (Jo and Kay) who arrive in New York City with big dreams of success. Part Two of the Series will be San Francisco, Collected Letters, the Sixties.
