A Thief's Word

He immediately noticed that beauty in a pastel-colored sundress. The handbag was slightly open—inside you could make out a wallet. Pasha Strakhov is indeed a lucky thief, but he fell for the temptation and only realized a bit too late that it was a police setup. His hand was instantly locked in a hard hold, and with the wallet in his hand, he was cuffed.

His girlfriend Zoyka had been waiting for Pasha for all five years. When he was finally released, he came out as a serious authority who’d passed through a tough criminal school. And the question—who to take as a partner—didn’t even arise. For a serious job, Strakhov went together with Zoyka. A dangerous deal for five thousand dollars was already almost done, but at the last moment, like snow on the head, masked strangers dropped on them. Deafening blows, knives, blood… Pasha managed to rip off the mask from one of the attackers. That’s when the secret of betrayal and the vile setup was revealed…

REVIEW: “Vladimir Kolychev’s detective stories and crime novels noticeably differ from the works of most other authors writing in this genre. Vladimir doesn’t just vividly and accurately depict crimes and the work of the police. He tries to understand where and at what moment that very trigger activates in people, turning an ordinary person into a murderer. Each book is a picture of tragic and terrible mistakes committed by people who, at first glance, seem ordinary—living beside us and within us…” Vitaly EGOROV, the best detective in the Soviet Union for the early 1990s, laureate of the Y. Semenov Prize.