“The co-owner of the private detective agency “Needle in a Haystack,” German Ivanovich Soldatov, was known as a thorough person. True, when Soldatov served in the St. Petersburg detective police as a supervisor, he was, on the contrary, considered a carminative and scorcher. He knew thieves, gamblers, hipsters and other dubious people from the capital. He easily went to dens, to thieves' dens and to apartments where they played for fun. It’s no wonder that Soldatov did not rise to the rank of senior warden, but was quietly expelled from the criminal investigation department and dismissed without pay...”