1996. Nick and Rosemary Storey are enjoying a river cruise from Moscow to St Petersburg when two British passengers from their excursion group are murdered, apparently on return from a visit to Yaroslavl. The cruise line ask them to get statements from relevant British passengers before the ship docks in St Petersburg. Facing a curtain of lies and half-truths, tales of hidden Nazi gold, well-concealed Russian connections and unable to check much of what is said to them, they have to rely on inconsistencies, tweaking the Russian bear's tail and a bear trap to identify both a brutal killer and his paymasters, not without risk to their own lives. "Death on the Volga" is the twenty-seventh book published in a series of detective stories set mostly in HM Customs & Excise, by Richard Hernaman Allen, a former Commissioner