A neatly constructed detective structure. Here you will find predictions of future misfortunes, mysterious deaths, and a living dead man. The reader, upon whom such a “whirlwind of impossibilities” (as the author puts it), involuntarily begins to doubt that Alter will be able to make ends meet in the denouement. However, the author rises to the occasion in this novel, and all impossible incidents are given—with some stretches—a rational explanation.