The Sky in Diamonds

The third book in the series about investigator Vasily Zaitsev, who this time has to investigate the murder of an actress whose fame echoed in the recently departed era of silent cinema. What served as the motive: missing jewels or... secret memoirs containing compromising material on many famous contemporaries of the movie star?
As always with Yakovleva, the gripping detective plot is just an excuse to tell about the era when the stars of sound cinema were rising, while those of silent cinema were fading and being forgotten. This is a novel about lost illusions and broken destinies, about Leningrad communal apartments of the 1930s and their inhabitants, and also about the elite: the author skillfully introduces Utyosov, Orlova, Alexandrov, and many other real historical figures into the book.