Whoever breaks the law must always be overtaken by retribution. This is an axiom. But times change, and so does the assessment of what happened. So the prosecutor’s office employee Kovshov, when faced with different people, cannot always answer the question: were they deservedly punished? Why did the “ghosts of the past” manage to hide their dark deeds for a long time? Isn’t excessive rigidity returning like a boomerang, hitting our society?.. And the story “Black August” tells about recent events - the days that went down in history under the name “GKChP”. The book includes new works by the master of Russian action-packed prose.