Friedrich Neznansky is perhaps Russia’s preeminent crime novelist. He is a lawyer by education, practiced law in Moscow, and was an investigator at the Moscow Prosecutor General’s office for fifteen years; his hero Aleksandr Turetsky reflects that experience. Although Neznansky’s crime novels are light fiction, the political and social currents of the day can be sensed in them, as well as everyday Russian realities. Several of his books have been televised, and Turetsky is something of a folk hero in Russia, albeit a flawed one—he has a straying eye. But he always catches the crooks.