Moscow 1937. Captain Korolev a police investigator is enjoying a long-overdue visit from his young son Yuri when an eminent scientist is shot dead within sight of the Kremlin and Korolev is ordered to find the killer. It soon emerges that the victim a man who it appears would stop at nothing to fulfil his ambitions was engaged in research of great interest to those at the very top ranks of Soviet power. When another scientist is brutally murdered and evidence of the professors’ experiments is hastily removed Korolev begins to realise that along with having a difficult case to solve he’s caught in a dangerous battle between two warring factions of the NKVD. And then his son Yuri goes missing . . .

Part of the Captain Alexei Dimitrevich Korolev series.