“The Mysterious Bride” is the second novel in a new series of detective stories by Yulia Yakovleva, set in the early 19th century. The author brings the chosen era closer to the atmosphere of a modern “hard-boiled” detective: a Russian captain in 1812, who involuntarily became a detective, solves a modern-looking - and at the same time possible in any era - crime. In the spring of 1813, the war was already over. Murin returns to his estate to find it destroyed and burned. Provincial society excitedly sees Murin as a “groom” and discusses their news: who has gained weight, whose dog has given birth, but the landowner Yukhnova has died under strange circumstances. Murin decides to take a closer look at this death, and therefore at the family of the late landowner. Everyone has a motive. Yukhnova's three adult children (Arkady, Tatyana and Yegor, who had gone to war) were in desperate need of money. But the wife of the eldest son, who died near Borodino, Elena Karlovna, looks the most suspicious of all. Is she who she says she is? The war has mixed up everything and everyone, but Murin is convinced that he is facing another crime in the “war will write off everything” series, and for the sake of future peacetime, Murin decides to find the killer and not let her escape.