Russian pre-revolutionary detective story (“criminal novel” in the language of that time) is completely unknown to the modern reader. This book, designed to fill this gap to some extent, includes novels and stories by Alexander Alekseevich Shklyarevsky (1837–1883), who, more than anyone else, can be called the “father of the Russian detective” and was extremely popular in the 1870s. 1880s. The memoirs of Shklyarevsky himself and his contemporaries, presented in the appendix, recreate the colorful image of this unique writer.