Dead Alive

The famous detective duo Leonov and Makseyev takes on a strange case: in the center of Moscow, inside an office building, inside the thickness of a wall they find the body of a woman carefully wrapped in film. The initial signs suggest that the murder happened quite recently, but an expert examination and circumstances point to something else—the deceased, Elena Samoita, a secular lioness, had been killed several years ago. Then the investigation was concluded, and her husband, recognized as guilty, has long been serving his sentence.

But how to explain the current discovery if it turns out that Elena was alive all these years and even worked in Moscow in plain sight—and recently even launched a network of travel agencies? Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Lev Gurov understands that this is a carefully planned criminal substitution and decides to bring up the archives of the closed case. Step by step, he returns to old clues and soon finds the key witness who can shed light on the mysterious story.

Nikolai Leonov, a former MUR investigator, knew the price of details and the logic of a real search—so his novels are dynamic, plausible detective stories with a tightly woven plot, unexpected twists, and an ending that’s hard to predict. The central figure of the series is Colonel Lev Gurov, a top-level professional with firm principles: his colleagues value him, opponents fear him, and women don’t remain indifferent. Books about Gurov have kept the attention of fans of Russian detective stories for several decades. The legendary series “Black Cat” has become a genre classic and includes more than two hundred works published in multi-million print runs.