The novel superbly immerses you in the atmosphere of the 19th century, in the world of mysticism and terrible myths, which makes it similar to the works of Nikolai Gogol, and the ability of the author, a professional historian, to notice and describe small details puts the book on the same shelf as the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was incredibly hot in St. Petersburg in the summer. People hid from the heat in their homes, but this did not help much. Drought destroyed the crops, and the city slowly descended into the chaos of famine and epidemics. At this time, news of the murders in Maple Grove arrived. Local shepherds found the mutilated body of a woman. Immediately after this, two more corpses surfaced, and another... The capital's detective Pyotr Dmitrievich Insarov was sent to Maple Grove to investigate the mysterious murders. Having examined the victims, the detective noticed that the dead were drained of blood, as if the blood had been carefully drained or sucked out through terrible wounds. But something else made Insarov go cold with horror: one of the killed - a young red-haired woman - looked exactly like the Polish princess Marina Vyshinskaya, depicted in an old painting in one of the local taverns. According to legend, Marina was poisoned by her own mother almost two hundred years ago...