In one of the older districts of St. Petersburg, children disappear. The search leads the investigation to a psychiatric hospital, a strange house of a famous director, a palace-museum of a grand duke, and a tiny shop called “24 hours.” Events occur with each of the main characters—an investigator, a museum security guard, and a secular lady-psychologist—that could be taken for mystical rites, for the delirium of a disturbed mind, and for real interference from the distant past into modern life. For all the excitement of the detective plot, the novel is serious—it reflects on what is happening to us in our world right now: about lost and stolen children; about odd people whose own inventions frighten them, but who show amazing fearlessness in the face of real dangers—those who are afraid to step outside the home or kiss a girl, yet cold-bloodedly become willing to go under the gun’s muzzle. The novel is about psychologists and psychiatrists, investigators and suspects, about the dead who return to take revenge on the living. And of course, it’s about St. Petersburg—and about love.