In this third Erast Fandorin mystery, set in 1877, Russia is at war with the Ottoman Empire, and the brilliant detective is searching the Russian army for a Turkish spy. He is followed by a young woman with revolutionary ideals, who has disguised herself as a boy to find her fiancé at the front. Her coldness toward Fandorin, a «lackey of the throne», begins to change as she comes to respect his courage, deductive powers, and piercing gaze. The «Russian Sherlock Holmes» who starred in «The Winter Queen» and «Murder on the Leviathan» returns in this novel by Russian literary phenomenon Boris Akunin.