The Last Matryoshka — Joyce Yarrow

Roped into helping her socially inept, émigré stepfather, Nikolai, escape the clutches of a blackmailer, performance poet and private investigator Jo Epstein enters a world where criminals enforce a 19th-century code of honor, threats arrive inside not-so-traditional Matryoshka (nesting) dolls, and fashion models adorn themselves with lewd prison tattoos. From Vladimir Central Prison to the brooding Russian forest, Jo races against the clock to solve crimes committed on two continents.