Europe is on the brink of the First World War. An assassination attempt on the monarch is planned in the Livadia Palace. The whirlpool of events inevitably and swiftly draws Erast Petrovich Fandorin into it and pulls him into the Black City, where, among the dark lanes of Baku and the palaces of the wealthy, an exciting and unpredictable plot of a new novel by Boris Akunin rapidly develops.
In the colorful atmosphere of the Apsheron Peninsula, a loyal, noble detective—along with his “sudden partner”—carries out a full-risk investigation. Detective Fandorin is almost sixty, yet again he will have to face betrayal, untangle a tangled web of cunning intrigues, and fight to the death with radical revolutionaries, ruthless Eastern bandits, and greedy oil magnates.