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Anne M Kennedy is a writer of historical mystery thrillers set in Baku, Azerbaijan. The City of Winds is a series of five novels that span the years 1890 - 1920. Anne grew up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. She trained as a teacher of History at Homerton College, Cambridge and accepted her first teaching post in Norfolk UK. Inspired to work overseas, she embarked on an international career which spanned North Yemen, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Bermuda. It was in Baku, while teaching a class about the 19th century oil barons, that she conceived the idea to write The City Of Winds series. She currently lives in Cornwall.
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Anne M. Kennedy’s The Baku Inheritance, book one in The City of Winds series, in 1890, Anton Nikolayevich Sabroski arrives in Baku with tanker plans that could open a new route through the Suez Canal. He learns that his father has died, and the family oil company has been stripped through falsified deals. Klara Darkova remains in the house, managing business matters while concealing that Ivan Darkov, a wanted writer, is hidden nearby. When Anton begins tracing accounts and missing assets, he finds evidence that the survey reports were altered, and entire companies existed only on paper. The inquiry draws attention from men who have already attacked him once and are prepared to do so again to recover what he has. As Anton works through multiple channels to rebuild what was lost, each answer leads toward those who arranged the collapse and will do anything to keep it buried.
Anne M. Kennedy’s The Baku Inheritance is a spectacularly sweeping Caspian Sea oil thriller set in the Russian Empire. Kennedy does a beautiful job of nailing the period details, specifically the 19th-century oil world and tsarist oversight. Anton is the lead, and the author balances his ambition with a very real, very likeable consideration for others. I love Klara, who, bless her, is willing to pretend she didn't find a Fabergé egg that would secure her own future. The antagonist is the Pallid Harrier, who serves American oil interests in a way that is eerily relatable to today. The author breathes life into the landscapes with visual prose, from the oil-stained grounds where labourers move through heat and smoke, to the Maiden Tower above the city where trade routes and crowded streets meet. Readers who adore well-written historical thrillers will delight in this book. Very highly recommended.
