Hellish Diggings

In these creepy places live only exiles. Well, how do they live? They survive. A fierce climate, taiga, full of hungry predators. Cruel laws based on the right of the strong. And to this earthly hell goes the outstanding Petersburg detective Alexey Nikolaevich Lykov. He is tasked with finding a lost village in the mountains that is not marked on any map. But behind it trails a wake of bad, very unpleasant rumors. They say that people disappear without a trace in the village – fifty a year. They go there – and that's the end of it. No word, no spirit. But what is completely incomprehensible: suddenly, Lykov's ally becomes the godfather of Petersburg's crime, the "Russian Professor Moriarty" Illarion Rudaitys, nicknamed Sorokoum. This devil in the flesh promised the detective any help and money, just so he could reach the mysterious place and find there Sorokoum's brother Mikhail…