The novel takes place at the beginning of the century. The reader is presented with a series of suspects, many of whom were enemies of the murdered man. The events in the novel unfold in such a way that one crime, like a chain reaction, pulls another along with it. But the impatient reader at the end of the novel will be met with an unusual resolution. The main character is a talented and unassuming detective, Aleksey Romanovich Patmosov, who skillfully investigates incredibly tangled cases. The prototype for this character, it seems, was a famous luminary of Petersburg’s investigative scene—the well-known Putilin.