Russian provincial town in the middle of the 1930s Stalin's Great Purge. Ivan Lapshin, the head of the local police, does what he has to do. And he does it well.
A murderer is using every possible trick in his efforts to escape from justice. He is extremely crafty in his ways of infiltrating the government. He becomes a politician with growing status and influence and an official immunity from prosecution.
Operatives are looking for a killer who has appropriated someone else's identity. The story of a real case based on the story of Yulian Semyonov.