Karen Chisholm
Book 2 in the Frank Merlin series, the first seems to have passed me by completely. Hopefully it's as good as this one is, a sort of crime fiction, police procedural, historical, not quite spy but nonetheless sneaky goings on story.
From the Blurb:
December 1938. Moscow. Josef Stalin has lost some gold. He is not a happy man. He asks his henchman Beria to track it down.