Aleksandr Ryzhov

A series of four exciting historical detective novels with the heroes Anna and Maximov. The plots are each related to historically significant times and places in Tsarist Russia during the first half of the 19th century.

Зрачок Индры - Zrachok Indry - The Indra Glance
Historical Adventure Detective Novel
Alfa Kniga, Moscow 2006, 244 pages

The novel is set during the regency of Tsar Nikolai I. The engineer Maximov and his wife Anita, a woman of Spanish birth, are enjoying a spa holiday in a small Caucasus town where war is raging (The Caucasian War 1817-1864). The modest couple becomes acquainted with some of the other illustrious spa guests: a count, an Italian doctor, a young Lieutenant recovering from a nervous breakdown, a spoilt St. Petersburg princess.
The peaceful spa lifestyle is disrupted when an unidentified corpse is discovered in the mountains. Events then snowball. There are more mysterious murders but nothing more than perplexing clues: a glass of sulphur spring water, the count’s lost cap, an enigmatic monogram, Rembrandt’s "Danaja", a mother-of-pearl comb, strange notes, tattered clothing, torn off buttons, a newspaper cutting, intonations, glances, phrases... Nothing escapes the attention of Anita whose criminal intuition has been stimulated. The case is a complicated one; no-one is immune to mix ups, not even the culprits. With her shrewdness and her refined intuition, however, Anita picks up the trail. Seemingly unrelated details reveal a tragedy played out at the foot of the Caucasus. All of those present share a major secret, a secret for which some of them have to pay with their lives.

Блеск ее ладоней - Blesk ee ladonei - Her Shining Hands
Historical Adventure Detective Novel
Alfa Kniga, Moscow 2006, 244 pages

The building of the railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, the longest railway route in the world, has begun during the period in which the novel is set, namely the 1840s. The engineer Maximov is one of the consultants on the construction project. There are those who have an interest in seeing the route diverted through Novgorod. This would bring advantages for Novgorod companies but would make the route longer and the tickets would later be more expensive. A dispute surrounding the project ensues. The other senior consultants meet their deaths under mysterious circumstances one after the other. Suspicion falls on Maximov who is found guilty in court and sent to a forced labour camp in Siberia.
His wife Anita tries to save him and wants to travel to Siberia with him. He won’t let her, however. He has to wear chains in Siberia. He meets Tomashevski, a fellow prisoner from Poland. Maximov and Tomashevski manage to escape while other criminals stage a revolt in their barracks. They hide from their pursuers in the Taiga but end up in the hands of savage Siberian tribes. Tomashevski is injured; Maximov is taken prisoner by the "savages". He is threatened with death but then an old shaman from a far away nomad camp is to decide his fate.
Anita appears dressed as a shaman, having long been on her beloved’s trail. She saves him. Having been saved from the “savages” and hidden by a Siberian orthodox community (who fled into the woods following the 18th century church reforms), however, Maximov is still in danger because as a labour camp prisoner on the run.
News of the sentence having been repealed then comes from St. Petersburg, the real murderer having been found – with the help of Anita of course. Maximov takes the secret of the goddess NANI with him from Siberia, a "savage" girl having shown him the goddess in the swamps. Nani is in fact a gold vein on the earth’s surface. Maximov had promised the girl that he would never take anyone else to the place, however, because other people would go mad if they looked at the shining hands of the goddess.