Darkness After Dawn

Even if dawn arrives, darkness will come again in its wake…
November 1982. The wedding anniversary of the Smelyansky couple is overshadowed by the death of Leonid Brezhnev. The new General Secretary is a great stress for people who have something to lose. And the Smelyanskys and their guests are just such people — the true nomenklatura elite. But that’s not the worst part. In the evening, their thirteen-year-old son Seryozha and a friend’s daughter Alena went to the cinema and did not return…
After a call from «the very top», Major of Militia Viktor Gordeev is brought in to search for the missing children. The swift and, most importantly, positive outcome depends on his transfer to the position of deputy head of the «murder» department. But what guarantees are there? What if they are already dead? Especially since a maniac is on the loose in the country, killing teenagers aged 13—16. And Gordeev's friend — investigator Leonid Chereminin — fears 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 leads. And then KGB agents get involved in the investigation…
The first retro-detective by Alexandra Marinina. An astonishingly accurate atmosphere of late Soviet Union, the moods of people, their fears and hopes. Criminals, militia officers and KGB agents, ordinary citizens and those who were allowed access to the «socialist feed trough» — each of them has their own story and their own motives.