Witty and irreverent, this is the first in an irresistible crime series set in Tsarist Russia in the 1890s from the award-winning Michael Pearce.

Russia in the 1890s, and a window of reform opens up in the oppressive Tsarist legal regime. Dmitri Kameron, a young lawyer of Scottish-Russian descent, is just the man to jump through it - but not before he has dealt with the mysterious disappearance of Anna Semeonova, a beautiful and well-connected young woman who, bizarrely, looks as if she has been shipped off by mistake to Siberia. Is this a bureaucratic bungle of enormous proportions, or something more calculated?

Dmitri reluctantly embarks on a journey to the furthest outposts of Russia, only to find his search for Anna becoming horribly complicated. He begins to suspect a sinister cover-up - but of what? To unearth the truth in the labyrinthine world of Russian officialdom is a tough task for even the most resourceful of men and Dmitri is forced to make some strange allies, not least among them the redoubtable Milk-Drinkers.