Lyudmila Bogdanova

Dans un monde post-apocalyptique, où une grande partie de la population est constituée de mutants déments et déformés gardés dans des réserves, un homme se lance dans la visite des ruines d'un musée enfoui sous la mer auquel on ne peut accéder qu'à marée basse.

Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.

Elecampane is a healing root like ginseng. According to Kuban belief, dug out in the forest on New Year's Eve, it cures any disease. Children from the Kuban village of Black Erik learn about Lenin’s illness and decide to help him.

Follows the service of Lieutenant Colonel Lubentsov as commandant of the German city of Lauterburg in the first days after the end of the Great Patriotic War.

Investigating the murder of a resident of the suburbs Louis Touré, Maigret faces the indifference and cruelty of the people surrounding Louis in recent years. The diagnosis and the verdict — all guilty.