Russian fiction writer Alexander Andreevich Shklyarevsky (1837–1883) belonged, according to V.V. Krestovsky, “to that working class of magazine literature, which can safely, in all fairness, be christened with the name of literary convicts.” All his life Shklyarevsky was forced to fight poverty. He taught for more than ten years, while simultaneously publishing articles in various newspapers and magazines. A man generously gifted with talent, he achieved neither material benefits nor literary recognition, although he has the right to be called “the father of the Russian detective.” Shklyarevsky gained fame as the “Russian Gaboriau” in the late 1860s as the author of numerous stories and novels with criminal content. In Shklyarevsky’s “criminal” works, the name of the criminal often becomes known to the reader already in the middle of the book. The main focus in them is not on the detective and the investigation process, but on the experiences of the criminal and the reasons that prompted him to commit the crime. In this regard, the novel “What prompted the murder?” published in this volume is indicative.