A Russian conspiracy in Washington, DC . . . A passenger jet is shot down, killing hundreds. A mole wreaks havoc in the White House. And an oligarch bent on the most malicious kind of revenge targets Joe Johnson.

War crimes investigator Johnson is sent undercover by his former employer, the CIA, to untangle a web of deceit and online blame games in Russia's Black Sea region after the destruction of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine.

But he quickly finds he has bitten off more than he can chew-and that the key to the conspiracy lies not in Moscow, but on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Johnson, his partner Jayne Robinson, and his friends in the CIA eventually have to come to terms with the fact that Russian methods of infiltrating the US are evolving faster than American counterintelligence realizes in the post-Cold War era, and they are struggling to catch up.

The drama reaches a climax in the US capital and on the Black Sea coast, where Johnson's long-term nemesis has a stronghold.

The Black Sea, book number six in the Joe Johnson series, is a compelling spy thriller with multiple twists that you won't want to put down.