The Hellish Placer. Series 1

May 1914. The air smells of gunpowder; Austria-Hungary sharpens its knife at Serbia. And detective Lykov has once again gotten himself in trouble with his superiors. He’s sent to Yakutia to help local authorities break up a gang of escaped convicts. As the rumor goes, they built an entire settlement in the mountains and live without a care. The police sent to disperse them met the bandits with machine-gun fire…

The detective was getting ready for his assignment when his worst enemy asked him for a favor—the “Moriarty of Petersburg,” also known as Ivan Ivanych Illarion Rudaytis. It turns out that in a remote settlement, his brother lives as a hostage. The fugitives are washing gold far away in Kolyma—gold that, according to the authorities, can’t possibly be there. And all the hired prospectors are killed in the autumn so that the mine’s secret isn’t revealed.

The State Councillor takes Azvestopulo as his assistant and sets off to the edge of the world to save people…