A famous police officer from Saint Petersburg, a favorite of ladies, Rodion Vanzarov, barely crossed the threshold of his twenty-fifth birthday when he takes up yet another investigation: under delicate circumstances, a well-known government official is brutally murdered. His son Serzh is suspected of the killing—a successful “businessman” dealing in railroad construction. It seems we have before us a classic crime driven by family conflict, and Vanzarov is just one step away from catching the murderer. But as he unravels one murder, he brings to life an old investigation that was never completed—begun even… by Lev Tolstoy!