Nina’s Friends

Sophisticated, layered, and character-driven, Nina’s Friends is a fast-moving international suspense thriller of betrayal, secrets, and greed, for fans of Daniel Silva, Tana French, and John Sandford.
“Sometimes the friends of your friend are your enemies.”
Nina’s Friends is an explosive murder mystery by New Jersey writer James Irwin. It follows Dragan Markov, a disgraced former agent with a violent page who was the dead woman’s lover. He believes the killings are connected to the couple’s illegal side-hustles. He follows the trail to Denmark, where he contends with a money launderer seeking an exit strategy, a fledgling domestic terrorist, a pansexual outlaw biker, and a beautiful colleague who wants nothing to do with him or his mission.
Time is not on Dragan’s side. He’ll soon become the scapegoat for the murders… unless whoever is tracking him through the side streets and shadows of Copenhagen kills him first.
Teeming with deceptions and bad behavior, Nina’s Friends explores themes of identity and belonging, duty and obligation, and social injustice, featuring multifaceted characters with complex motivations. It is book one of the Tajna Circle series.
Publication date: 25 March 2025
Format: eBook, paperback
Page count: 364 pages
ebook ISBN: 978-1-967223-00-8
paperback ISBN: 978-1-967223-01-5
5.5” x 8.5” quality paperback
Publisher: Vague Apparatus Press

ABOUT THE TAJNA CIRCLE SERIES
The Tajna Circle series is a collection of stories featuring Russian agents embedded in the northeast United States, and some of their associates. They are an anachronism, leftovers from an old way of doing things, in a program that still exists because someone high up in government doesn’t want to lose that line item in their budget. Some have lived in the USA so long they are no longer Russian, but not long enough to be Americans, either. Their true selves exist in a shadowy, liminal border between cultures where violent crime, personal betrayal, lust for power, and international intrigue also dwell.
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