Read this mystery for the setting - Kyiv, Ukraine in 1919 during a brief Bolshevik occupation. The book opens as Cossacks randomly attack citizens on their way out of town, completing a white army retreat. Samson, our young orphan hero, has to manage this chaos having lost an ear and his entire family. He joins a nascent Bolshevik police force with no veterans or experience, and gets a firearm.