The protagonist of the novel, former prosecutor’s investigator Sergey Platonov, receives an unexpected offer that’s hard to refuse: for good money, he must reveal a secret connected to one of his classmates. Five people are aware of the secret, but one died in a fire, another moved to Australia to hunt crocodiles, and the third ended up in a madhouse… And Platonov abandons his unfinished dissertation and steps onto a slippery and dangerous path: to learn the secret, he will have to spy, track, bribe, seduce—maybe even kill. Today by using other people’s hands, but tomorrow, if necessary, Platonov will pick up a pistol—and won’t miss. Maybe he’ll even like it…