The collection of works by the famous Moscow prose writer, master of the detective genre Sergei Aleksandrovich Vysotsky includes the reader’s favorite stories “A Shot in Orelya Mane”, “A Sharp Turn”, “Habitat” and the novel “Anonymous Customer”. The heroes of the works are criminal investigation workers. The events are of a thrilling adventure nature. But this is not an end in itself. The author touches on serious moral and social problems and tries to answer the question: why does a person become a criminal?