Hired to trace Anna Ball, who has vanished, Miss Maud Silver encounters an eccentric art colony, bank robberies, and counterfeiting. As with other Miss Silver mysteries, the story relies on character development.
Young Stalin is a remarkable adventure story about an exceptional, turbulent young man, born in exoticism, raised in the church, fancying himself a poet, then embracing revolutionary idealism and thereby finding his romantic Messianic mission in life.