RESULTS

James Gillespie, an Irish writer, goes to the Congo in 1962, in pursuit of an Italian woman. What follows tells of the ebb and flow of their passion, the shimmering heat of Africa, the terrible collapse of the colonial regime, the murder of the African leader and general descent into unholy chaos.

This is the story of Agustin, Quinn and Judy, who are being pursued through Mexico and Guatemala by the sinister New Era Mission. The three are desperate to escape and regain control of their lives. As the Mission closes in, in order to survive, they must overcome their suspicions and differences.

It is St Petersburg, 1914: imposing and shabby, monumental and squalid, and - under its surface of frosty glamour - seething with plots and secret allegiances. On a blustery April day, O.V. Gulko, a respected newspaper editor, is murdered in front of a shocked crowd. Five days later, Dr Otto Spethmann, famous psychoanalyst, receives a visit from the police. There has been another murder in the city - and somehow he is implicated. He is mystified - and deeply worried, as much for his young, spirited daughter as for himself. He is preoccupied, too, by two new patients: Anna Petrovna, the society beauty plagued with nightmares with whom he is steadily and inappropriately falling in love, and troubled genius Rozental, the brilliant but mentally fragile chess master, due to play the most important competition of his life - the spectacular St Petersburg chess tournament - but on the verge of a complete breakdown. With the city rife with speculation and alarm, Spethmann broods over his own chessboard, its pieces frozen mid-battle, and contemplates the many forces - political, historical, sexual - that are holding him in their grasp.