In the 25 years since Inspector Arkady Renko solved the Gorky Park killings, Russia has been transformed by capitalism. But although governments fell, greed and lust for power thrived. In this fifth Renko mystery, a Russian billionaire falls from a high-rise Moscow apartment. Renko's investigation leads to the nuclear wastelands of Chernobyl, where he finds another wealthy corpse and high-level corruption. A peasant explains the brutal order of Russian life to Renko: 'Wolves hate dogs. Wolves hunt down dogs because they regard them as traitors. If you think about it, dogs are dogs only because of humans; otherwise they'd all be wolves, right? And where will we be when all the dogs are gone? It will be the end of civilisation.'