About

The Ruthless Court by Bonny and Autumn St. John

Out Now!

The Ruthless Court lives in the revengeful present, born out of the devious past. And royalty, lies, Rasputin and spies are just some of the ingredients in a cauldron of contemporary and past deceits and feuds which boils over into today’s world. When the second in line to Queen Victoria’s throne terrifies his father into helping him fake his death, and then disappears to be near his one true love he has no idea of the chaos that will create in the twenty-first century.

This escapist thriller is set in the present and the past. It brings together several historic characters, their behaviour and today’s consequences of that, and out of it all, against the backdrop of well-known events, spins a single entertaining, human story.

In The Ruthless Court the man some claim was Jack the Ripper, Prince Albert Victor, ends up at the Russian Imperial Court, under an assumed identity. He engages in many physical and psychological confrontations with Rasputin for the love of the last Tsarina, Alexandra – Alix to her German family and close British relatives. To win and to protect his beloved Alix, the Prince uses the first MI6 spy in Russia, Lenin, Anna Vyrubova, the Tsarina’s closest friend, and even Henri Matisse, among others. The two rivals’ actions end in deadly tragedy then. And through some vengeful descendants, their feud reaches out down the decades and causes bloody mayhem now.

That begins with the Queen being taken hostage at the Wimbledon tennis finals. She and the world’s top female tennis player, a Russian, know why but aren’t saying. Instead, a suave, ruthless “messenger,” a leader of modern-day White Russians, does. He reveals the Prince’s exploits in Russia, and explains why their consequences have exploded into the open now, and are the basis of his group’s unprecedented demands. But does even he know everything which is going on? As his audience of one, he boldly chooses a clever, senior MI5 officer, who has to decipher truth and lie from what he is and isn’t told.  But all’s not as it seems in MI5, even as its agents in the UK and MI6 spies in Russia use their tricks to try to defeat the “messenger” and his murderous fanatics.

But who really are the ruthless court?

♛ ♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛♔ ♕ ♚ ♛

And if you don’t already know:

You can move within a Kindle book as you would in a paper copy. The “GO” button on the menu bar lets you move to, among other places, the Table of Contents and to Page or Location. In addition, when you reopen a Kindle book it will open at the last page you were reading. A paper copy doesn’t do that. You either have to remember where you were or bookmark it! The Kindle Book also allows you to choose from three different page backgrounds: white, off-white (sepia) and black.