Ross Thomas, for the first time in the detective genre, introduced and established a new hero - the so-called Mediator. The intermediary Saint-Yves (the series was published under the pseudonym Oliver Blick) is not a detective or a police officer, but at the same time not a representative of the underworld, but a person who is trusted. The uniqueness of his position between two opposing camps allows him to solve original problems that are not available to ordinary detective heroes, and gives a sense of novelty to the genre itself. (The text of the book was translated from the original language using an artificial intelligence program. For the most part, the translation of the text is of very high quality, but in some cases, due to the imperfection of the technology, there may be incorrect phrase translations in the text, as well as single words and expressions may not be translated.