Secret People

Festive Petrograd in the Christmas season. In a popular restaurant, enjoying an exquisite dinner, the detectives Lykov and Azvestopulo spot two suspicious individuals nearby. One is a young man with criminal habits, the other is a smooth-shaven German with shiny cheeks. Despite their slight drunkenness, the detectives decide to follow these people.

However, the thief and the German skillfully disappear into the foggy night of Petersburg. Their trail leads the detectives to the hotel “Mitava,” where the hallway attendant has repeatedly seen them in a separate room. Great! Now the forensic experts will be able to identify the criminal by fingerprints and learn his name from the police registration office.

But the results of the examination were unexpected. In the hotel room they found only the fingerprints of a German citizen with the surname Wedel. There were no other traces—or they lacked fingerprint patterns. How can you identify someone by absent traces?

This is an exciting historical detective story by the winner of the “Russian Detective” prize, Nikolai Svechin. The novel is part of the series about the detective Alexei Lykov and is the 38th book in the cycle.