Darkness After Dawn

Even if dawn arrives, darkness will come again…

November 1982. The anniversary of the Smelyanski couple's wedding is overshadowed by the death of Leonid Brezhnev. The new general secretary is a major stress for people who have something to lose. And the Smelyanskys and their guests are just that - the true nomenklatura elite. But that is not the worst part. In the evening, their thirteen-year-old son Seryozha and the daughter of a friend, Alyona, went to the cinema and did not return…

After a call "from the very top," Major of Militia Viktor Gordeev is assigned to the search for the missing children. His transfer to the position of deputy head of the "homicide" department depends on a quick and, most importantly, positive result. But what guarantees are there? What if they are already dead? Especially since there is a maniac in the country killing teenagers aged 13–16. And Gordeev's friend, criminal investigation officer Leonid Chereminin, suspects the worst.

However, his stepdaughter - a recent graduate of the law faculty of Moscow State University, Nastya Kamenskaya - has a different opinion: the missing children do not fit the profile of a serial killer. The operatives begin to work through all possible versions. And then the KGB officers get involved in the investigation…

The first retro-detective by Alexandra Marinina. An astonishingly accurate atmosphere of late USSR, the moods of people, their fears and hopes. Criminals, police officers, KGB agents, ordinary citizens, and those who were allowed to the "socialist trough" - each of them has their own story and motives.