The legendary detective tandem of Leonov and Makeev. A series of murders shook the small town of Sukhodols’k. First, within a single night, an entire family of farmers was killed—mother, father, and two underage children. Three days later, the head of the rural administration was murdered, followed by the former head of the regional police. The first theory of the Ministry of Internal Affairs colonel Lev Gurov—clashes between local drug dealers—turned out to be untenable. All victims were killed with the same pistol. But what else, besides the murder weapon, could unite such different people by status? Soon Gurov realizes he has, it seems, found an answer to this cunning question… Nikolai Leonov, in the past an MUR investigator, knew firsthand how the most tangled criminal cases are solved. That’s why each of his books is a truthful, gripping story with an unpredictable intrigue and an unexpected ending. The main hero of these books, Colonel Lev Gurov, is a top-class detective with a host of positive human qualities. His friends respect him, his enemies fear him, and women love him. He is a real homegrown Superman. For forty years, novels about Lev Gurov have consistently drawn fans of Russian detective fiction. The now-classic series “The Black Cat” includes more than 200 books published in print runs totaling tens of millions of copies.