First his beloved wife shot herself, and after some time he himself committed suicide. Someone considers this tragedy to be almost a logical result of those sixteen years during which N. A. Shchelokov headed the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. People who knew the minister and his family well have a different assessment of what happened. For some reason, in our time it is generally accepted that people die voluntarily, only feeling guilty, avoiding retribution. And the time when a person decided to take a fatal step in a desperate attempt to preserve honor and dignity is moving further away from us. What and how happened in our case? This is a book about this, the author of which breaks through the veil of many years of silence, rumors and speculation that shrouded the fate of her hero.