About the book: 2024 / At the beginning of 1914, the Police Department is preparing for a change of leadership. The director invites the head of the criminal investigation department, Alexei Nikolaevich Lykov, to go with an audit somewhere into the outback to sit out the change of power. Lykov chooses Ryazan. His friend General Taube asks Alexei Nikolaevich to give a cash gift to his former orderly Vasily Poludkin, who settled in Ryazan. Fifty rubles is a lot of money for a retired orderly who gets a job as a watchman at a factory. But the gift brings disaster - the watchman is killed and robbed. A formal business trip takes on a new meaning. Lykov considers it his duty to punish the killers of his friend’s former orderly. He is on the trail of a certain Yegor Knyazev, nicknamed Prince, a man distinguished by ambition and cruelty. However, it is not possible to detain him in Ryazan…