Hard, piercing novels about the confrontation between criminal evil and detectives of the Criminal Investigation Department—who do not retreat in the face of danger.
In the late 1970s, in a small settlement, Judge Aleksandr Pavlovsky is found dead: a shot from a shotgun right into the heart. At first everything looks like suicide, but an expert examination establishes that someone else fired. A case is brought in for the metropolitan detective Konstantin Nemirovich. His first version is revenge by a former criminal whom Pavlovsky once sentenced. However, the suspect has an alibi. And then the investigation leads to a long-forgotten criminal case: a convict sentenced to the ultimate penalty—who supposedly vanished without a trace during a terrible railway disaster…