A Cold Wind From Moscow is the eighth book in the author’s Tom Wilde spy thriller series. It’s a series I absolutely love and nothing excites me more than learning another book is on the way. You probably could read it as a standalone but if you want to give yourself a real treat, read the series from the beginning starting with Corpus.

Tom is continuing his vain attempt to free himself from the grip of MI5 and return to his role as a Professor of History at Cambridge University. He has a young son whom he wants to spend more time with, especially as his wife Lydia is away training to be a doctor. It’s a long-held ambition of hers and Tom is not the sort of man to stand in her way. To be fair, she’s not the sort of woman to let a man stand in her way either. Their meetings are limited to brief encounters in London hotels where Tom, in the words of Lydia, is called upon to perform his ‘nuptial duties’.

However Freya Bentall, a senior officer with MI5, is a difficult woman to say no to, particularly when the security of the country is at risk. Tom may be American by birth but he’s a Briton by choice, and a patriot. With echoes of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre, Tom takes on the task of identifying the traitor Freya believes has infilitrated MI5. In engaging with her three suspects he finds himself visiting some varied places – from seedy gambling dens, to dockside cafes and elegant art galleries – and characters from all echelons of society, including some pretty violent individuals with their own signature way of despatching people who get in their way.

We also know from the dramatic opening chapter that there are even nastier people out there, motivated by political ideology and utterly ruthless because they know the personal consequences of failure. ‘Bloodshed was in their nature. Compassion was an alien concept.’ They also know that someone with secrets is the perfect target for coercion.

The story is peppered with exciting action scenes, including a violent assault on a remote house made even more dramatic by the fact the harsh winter has brought England to a virtual standstill. We also find out some intriguing information about the enigmatic and famously taciturn Freya Bentall.

Rory Clements has perfected the art of combining real events, in this case the post-war atomic weapons race, with exciting fictional scenarios. The story moves at the speed of a runaway train and has surprises around every corner. Don’t be shocked if a character you trust turns out to be a wrong’un, or the other way around.

As a gift for faithful followers of the series, there are references to events and characters in the second Tom Wilde book, Nucleus. I also loved the walk-on parts for three real-life individuals in the closing pages of the book.

If you are a fan of spy thrillers, A Cold Wind From Moscow will most definitely not disappoint. I loved it.

Another excellent read in the professor Tom Wilde stories. This story has everything thrown in from gangsters, spies, the weather!. Rory Clements knows how to keep you engrossed.

The winter of 1947 is colder and longer than anyone can remember and for the British public one of hardship as rationing and shortages of everything bite deep. Tom Wilde is settling back into life as a Cambridge Don and family man when he gets a call from Freya Bentall. She is concerned that someone in the secret service is betraying their country to the Communists and she wants Tom to investigate. Reluctantly Tom becomes involved with a plot to steal nuclear secrets and a Russian hitman.
The Tom Wilde series is one of my favourites in the thriller genre and this is a cracking adventure. The deprivations and cold are beautifully imagined and the plot is complex and satisfying. Loosely based around actual characters and plots, this is historical fiction at its strongest.

A Cold Wind from Moscow by Rory Clements
Having read and enjoyed other books featuring Tom Wilde I was very much looking forward to reading this novel and I wasn’t disappointed. As with all of the others it is fast paced and thrilling. It is set in the freezing winter of 1947 when much of Britain has been brought to a standstill by the terrible snow.
Tom Wilde, a history professor, who helped out the secret services on many occasions during the war and briefly afterwards is settling into college life when he receives a call from Freya Bentall, a senior officer with MI5, who feels surrounded by possible double agents. She calls on Tom Wilde to help her to establish who she can trust. There is the suggestion that there is a spy at the heart of the British Atomic hub and Wilde has to seek him out.
In addition to becoming involved with dangerous spies who will stop at nothing to achieve their ends he also becomes involved with a gangland boss from the Walworth area and he seems to be linked to a murder in Tom’s college.
It is an excellent thriller gripping you from the outset and my only quibble with the book would be the small role which Lydia, Tom Wilde’s wife, has in the novel and her abandonment of her only son. It is an excellent piece of storytelling and evokes the period very well. I will be recommending it to my various book groups and look forward to Tom Wilde’s next outing. Many thanks to the author, the publisher and Net Galley for the opportunity to read it in return for an honest review. I would probably give 4.5 if possible.

I do love this series featuring American Cambridge History Professor Tom Wilde. I actually thought that The English Fuhrer was the last book, so I was delighted to discover that after a year’s break, Rory Clements had written another adventure for my favourite reluctant spy.
Set in the frozen winter of 1947, the books starts with Tom finding a dead body in his rooms at Cambridge University, and gets himself involved, once again, with MI5.
This book was full of some really nasty characters, including London gangsters, MI5 and Soviet spies, and Philip Easton from the previous books. I really didn’t know who to trust, and poor Tom felt the same, especially when Freya Bentall, his contact at MI5 wasn’t completely honest with him either.
With harsh weather conditions, and tighter rationing even though WW2 was over, it all added to a atmospheric read that kept me hooked.
Highly recommended if you enjoy spy thrillers set in post war Britain.

Excellent twisty storyline.
Keeps you guessing right to the end.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Thanks for the opportunity to read and review

This is the first Rory Clements book I have read, and I have no idea how his books have escaped my radar up to now.
“A Cold Wind from Moscow” is set just after WW2 in the early stages of the Cold War, and mainly during the bitterly cold winter of 1947. It has an exciting and fairly realistic plot which brings Military Intelligence, Western governments’ atomic research, academe, and the London underworld all colliding with each other. Descriptions of contemporary current events and landscapes, the use of some “real” characters, and the inevitable paranoia help ramp up the atmosphere of what is an excellent read. I was unaware until about three-quarters of the way through the book that it could be the latest one in a series featuring some of the characters, which is what it is, and I am now looking forward to reading the previous books.

In the depths of winter my literary brain can struggle and I turn to immersive page-turners . This time last year I binged on the Tom Wilde books so I was pleased to be able to enjoy A Cold Wind from Moscow over the Christmas period.

If you’re not familiar with the series, they cover the period before, during and after the Second World War. Tom Wilde is a half-American Cambridge academic who has connections to both the British and American intelligence services. Each book draws on real historical events (part of the fun is going back later to research what was real and what made up) and incorporates a story involving Wilde, often taking him across Europe to follow up leads.

A Cold Wind from Moscow stays closer to home, with much of the action taking place in London. It is 1947, and the miseries of rationing and post-war austerity are compounded by an exceptionally severe winter. Wilde’s wife Lydia is away in London, studying to become a doctor. He is balancing academic life and caring for their son. The Soviet threat to Britain comes close to home when he finds a visitor dead in his Cambridge rooms – believed to have been killed by a Soviet assassin.

Wilde is brought into the investigation by Freya Bentall, a senior figure in British intelligence, who believes the Soviets have a mole in her service. His role is to work with the officers she suspects on the pretext that he is representing the Americans, to try and discover who the mole is.

The story is rich in atmospheric detail, as he follows the three spies into their respective worlds. He meets artists and left-wing intellectuals in the home of a wealthy artist and society lady. He mingles with working-class agitators. He becomes embroiled in the London underworld, where criminal gangs, political corruption and espionage merge.

Wilde believes there is a connection with the work of Britain’s nuclear scientists and this leads him to question some of the nuclear scientists at Harwell – and catch up with old friends who first appeared in Nucleus, the second book in the series.

The cold, the hunger, the sheer bleakness of a world that promised much as the war ended are vividly evoked. (The novel opens with Wilde wondering whether he can afford to lavish an absurd amount of money on the lone, wrinkled peach in a greengrocer’s window.) The three suspects are colourful and distinctive, and may have more than a passing resemblance to the real-life moles who were later found to have been operating at this period.

I have a couple of qualms. One is that despite loving the series, I’m not sure I like Tom Wilde the man very much. He’s quite po-faced and is always sure that he’s right, even though he doesn’t seem that great at spying and leaves a significant body count, including innocents, in his wake.

I feel that the plot of A Cold Wind from Moscow relies on Wilde and the British making quite basic errors. My knowledge of tradecraft is limited to reading other spy novels but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to use your family home as a safe house. Of course, people do things in novels that they don’t do in life for dramatic effect. Still, I couldn’t help nodding along when Freya says they have to catch the mole or the Americans will think they’re a bunch of amateurs.

Overall though, it’s great to be back in Wilde’s world. A Cold Wind from Moscow is pacy and atmospheric and keeps you wondering who you can trust.

A real thriller! Who is the spy amongst the British Government? An enthralling, compulsive read, multifaceted and great characters. The protagonist, Tom a Cambridge professor, gets called back to work into the world of espionage and in his attempts to unearth the spy. Along the way many significant people fall foul of the opposing forces and safe houses are no longer safe. Set at the end of WW2 when Britain is in the process of rebuilding its Nation. A great read that keeps you questioning where it might lead. With this novel I’m now becoming a convert to spy thrillers.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers Bonnier Books for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Joseph Stalin wants access to the secrets of the atom bomb, and he knows the British are vulnerable. So he sends in his best spy to retrieve them.
Meanwhile Tom Wilde is back at Cambridge University doing what he loves best, that’s teaching.
With the war well and truly over and his life starting to settle down, he can finally relax, until he finds a body at the university, and he is dragged back into the world of espionage.
Wilde is persuaded to help out MI5 by Freya Bentall, the officer in charge. She doesn’t know who to trust, and an outsider might be the answer to find out what’s going on.
Wilde could never known his task would be so perilous, from the criminal underworld to the elite of British society, all orchestrated by the best spy the Soviet Union have imbedded in MI5.
To stop a catastrophic disaster from happening Wilde has to catch a spy before secrets are revealed, stop a group of killers before they escape and keep his family safe at the same time. It’s the ultimate test of his abilities, can he succeed?
Rory Clements is as good as it gets when comes to writing spy novels.
He has a great character in Tom Wilde and he knows how to set the scene perfectly.
I’ve read every book he has ever written and I have always found them incredibly enjoyable. He truly is a fine author and his latest Tom Wilde book is very good indeed.

I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) Munich Wolf by Rory Clements last year but this is my first in the series about American born Tom Wilde, now returned to life as an academic at Cambridge University following the end of the Second World War. The war with Germany may be over but the Cold War with Russia is beginning in earnest and Tom is soon called upon by the secret services in the UK to help uncover a network of spies centred around the race among the major powers to develop nuclear weapons.

This was a cracking read. The action is fast paced and tense but the author also takes time to set the scene and have slower periods between the action, which makes it all the more engrossing. I’m not familiar with the character of Tom Wilde but the author obviously knows him inside out and he, and his history, were fully formed from page one. There’s a fantastic sense of time and place as well, with the terrible winter of 1947 and the hardships of post war life in Britain made very clear, and it has a lot more depth than many others in the genre.

I had no difficulty joining the series at this point since it’s a new war in effect, but I will certainly be going back to the start and reading the rest. Superb.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

Another brilliant spy/espionage book by Rory Clements, featuring the dashing Tom Wilde. The characters are so full and rich, the pace of the story quickens and slows allowing the author to expand and elaborate nuances in the story. I would love to see these books ( and Tom Wilde) dramatised for the film or TV. I can already picture a few actors who could bring him to real life. Great book and as always, I was sorry the story had to end. I can't wait for the next adventure.

What can I say? Another absolutely brilliant book from Rory Clements! This has to be a 'must read' for anyone who enjoys a spy thriller story!
Tom Wilde, the American born Oxford lecturer, has settled back into civilian life after the end of the Second World War. But there is a cold wind blowing from Moscow as the three world powers, Russia, America and Britain race to improve their nuclear forces. Russia in particular, is ready to use force to get the information they need and very happy to sow confusion and dissent amongst their former allies. Tom is soon lured back to help the British secret services with a very specific problem.
This is a cracking read- the story twists and turns as the key players make their moves- who can you truly trust? It kept me completely gripped throughout and I couldn't put the book down! The authors use of characters brings colour and life to the story, as their foibles are revealed underlining the frailty of man.
Highly recommended!

‘A Cold Wind From Moscow’, by Rory Clements,is number eight in the Professor Tom Wilde series.
I’ve enjoyed reading many of Tom’s spy exploits in all the previous books up until now,when facing the threats posed by Nazi Germany,and its supporters.In light of this I was interested to see how this new episode in the developing Cold War would play out.
Tom is brought on board by MI5 ‘Mother’,Freya Bentall,to look into suspected traitors who may be sharing secrets with Russian assassins and sympathetic infiltrators who plan to cause chaos to the British nuclear development programme.
This turns out to be ,in my opinion, the most compelling and consistently gripping tale in these novels yet.The twists and turns ,along with the array of new characters makes for an intriguing and thoroughly entertaining narrative.


Thank you to NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK for an advanced copy for review.

Tom Wilde, Cambridge Professor and ex OSS agent, is back in another riveting post-war espionage thriller. You've got spies, London gangland, Soviet agents and the Harwell atomic research centre all combined into a superb read.

Rory Clements really has hit gold in these series of spy & espionage novels.

Highly recommended as always, although if new to the series maybe start at the beginning as this novel features events and characters from an earlier book in the series.

Tom Wilde the Cambridge Professor and ex OSS agent returns in another tale of murders laced with espionage as he hunts a Moscow mule. Given three possible suspects the story races along using some actual historical characters who add fascinating weight to the storyline. From Cambridge in all its quiet educational atmosphere to classy parts of London and lesser criminal parts it’s a complex twisting tale that is very satisfying. Hopefully he can be tempted away from academia to continue his adventures in a darker world..

Clements is a master of creating cracking narratives and superb atmospheres, this book featuring Tom Wilde (book 8) is no different. This works as a stand-alone so do not be put off.

Post Second World London Is a bleak place - rationing and the scars of bomb damage are ever present & the spectre of nuclear war lies in the background. Tom Wilde is tasked with uncovering a mole from 3 British spies who is giving the Russians nuclear secrets.

There is an excellent set of supporting characters (Lady Chalke & Dolly) and that there are elements and people from history, make this a cut above.

A total 5/5 from me, thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I have read a few of Rory Clements Tudor books years ago and was really pleased to be offered the chance to read A Cold Wind from Moscow. It lived up to my expectations. Tom Wilde, a Cambridge professor and ex spy, is recalled by Freya Bentall a senior MI5 officer, to help flush out a spy in the midst of the organisation. Tom agrees initially to help for one week, after finding a body, killed by an ice axe., in his rooms at Cambridge. There are three suspects and he has to get close to each of them to find out. The journey involves him in great danger with visits to the seedier places in London, If he fails, he will be putting not only his family, but also his country in great danger. The bitterly cold winter of 1947 along with rationing, power cuts and little transport, all added extra difficulties for Wilde. As the tension mounts, the book becomes a real page turner.
I have no hesitation in recommending this great book. I would like to thank NetGalley, Rory Clements and the publishers, Zaffre books of an arc of A Cold Wind from Moscow.

I greatly enjoyed the Tudor novels from this author, and was intrigued by this story of Cold War espionage. This is my first Tom Wilde book, so my reading list has now grown, but I am looking forward to them… all seven of them!
Set in 1947-48, Britain was freezing cold, both in weather terms and the general mood of the population. Despite having won the war, everything is in short supply, food is still rationed, power cuts make life a misery, houses are also desperately needed, so many have been lost due the bombing raids, it all seems a harsh price to pay for freedom.
Tom Wilde is a Professor at Cambridge teaching Tudor history, he has supposedly retired from his spying days. When he finds a dead body in his college rooms with an ice axe in its skull, Tom reports to his old boss Freya Bentall, senior officer of Intelligence, who asks Tom to help her search for a “ mole” in the secret service, she can trust him.
Tom is thrust into the murky world of spies, London gangsters, drugs, nightclubs, the hidden culture of homosexuality, and the secretive nuclear energy society. He must find out who is passing vital information to the Soviets and safeguard his adopted country from harm.
A wonderful Cold War espionage novel, where historical facts are used to create a wholly believable work of fiction.
It is exciting, well paced and there are some very likeable characters, Tom and Freya are the stand out ones for me.
The research is impeccable, I remember my parents speaking about that cold winter, working in a farming community, trying to keep animals safe and digging sheep out of fresh snow drifts on a daily basis.
I’m looking forward to reading the previous books, there are mentions of Nucleus, but I still enjoyed this book by guessing at the gaps in my knowledge of this series. The postscript at the conclusion to this book was interesting, it sets out the truth of those involved and what happened to them.
If this is filmed, Lia Williams would make a good Freya Bentall, her face kept coming to my mind whilst reading this.
Five star read. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers Zafron/ Bonnier books for my eARC, freely given in return for my honest review.
I will leave a copy to Goodreads and Amazon UK upon publication.

A Cold Wind from Moscow is the 8th book in the Tom Wilde series by Rory Clements and this excellent run of stories is showing no signs of diminishing returns.

Despite the War having finished Wilde is brought back, somewhat reluctantly, into service as he is tasked with uncovering a mole within the security services.

The book moves along at a good pace and keeps the pages turning with a great main and some excellent supporting storylines.

Overall this is an other winner.