In 1882, after six years of foreign travel and adventure, renowned diplomat and detective Erast Fandorin returns to Moscow, in the heart of Mother Russia. His homecoming is anything but peaceful. In the hotel where he and his loyal if impertinent manservant Masa are staying, Fandorin's old war-hero friend General Sobolev ("Achilles" to the crowd) has been found dead, felled in his armchair by an apparent heart attack. But Fandorin suspects an unnatural...
