Chief Homicide Investigator Arkady Renko's investigation of three mutilated bodies reaches to the highest levels of the Communist hierarchy.

In Havana, detective Arkady Renko of the Moscow police joins forces with beautiful Ofelia of the Cuban police to investigate the murder of a Russian diplomat. The protagonists find love while the reader gets an inside look at post-Cold War Havana.

When the brilliant and fearless young reporter Tatiana Petrovna--based on the real-life journalist Anna Politkovskaya--falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow in the same week that notorious mob billionaire Grisha Grigorenko is shot in the back of the head, Renko finds himself on the trail of a mystery as complex and dangerous as modern Russia itself. The body of an elite government translator shows up on the bleak sand dunes of Kalingrad...

"Detective Arkaday Renko risks his life when he heads to Ukraine shortly before the Russian invasion to find an anti-Putin activist who has mysteriously disappeared. It's June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt...