One of the most terrible books written in our country in post-Soviet times. Anatoly Pristavkin, adviser to the President of the Russian Federation on pardons, explores the roots of Russian crime. In front of us pass a succession of maniacs and child killers, rapists and sadists, supermen with a perverted psyche and simply drunkards, ready to kill their drinking buddies over a glass of vodka. Every day, near us - here and now - dozens of terrible crimes occur. In the novel, the starting point of which was the work of A. Pristavkin in the Pardon Commission, there is no thickening of colors - but only protocol precision, no savoring of details - but only details of court sentences, there is no moralizing - but there is a call for mercy for those who can still be returned to normal life, and the writer’s pain for our cruel society, which has given birth to animals in human form and is unable to oppose them with anything other than the death penalty.