The Case of the Chimeras

St. Petersburg, May 1811. The Russian Empire, anticipating war with Napoleon, lives in tension. Count Andrey Izvolsky, an investigative officer of the office of piety, receives an assignment to investigate the mysterious deaths of four people who died from an unknown drink. The day before, a carriage loaded with boxes of wine overturned into the canal. The men retrieved a dozen bottles and drank them, after which they died in horrible agony. The dreadful sight of the corpses with wide-open eyes, black tongues, and blackened chins as if scorched by fire reminds the detective of the monstrous chimeras. Izvolsky begins his inquiry and discovers that they did not die from wine, but from printer's ink. This clue leads him to a trail of an underground organization printing counterfeit money. The investigation, initially seeming routine, leads the count to unravel a terrible conspiracy of French intelligence seeking to undermine the economy of Russia before the invasion.