Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Deathwatch"

Deathwatch, by Elleston Trevor, was published as a hardcover by Beaufort Books in 1985, but the edition that caught my eye was the Star Book (imprint of W. H. Allen & Co.) mass market edition. The cover says everything. The artist: unknown (to me at least)

The first paragraph:

The snow came drifting in massive silence across the Lenin Hills, blown from the north and spreading rumpled ermine over the city, torn here and there by the spikes of the church steeples and jeweled by the street lamps, with the gold domes of the Kremlin burning against the black horizon to the south.

Elleston Trevor is best remembered as the author of The Flight of the Phoenix (1964), which has been translated to film twice, and his alter ego, Adam Hall, who penned a number of significant adventure and spy stories, including the Quiller books.