About the book: year / In 1901, St. Petersburg burned one thousand twenty-one times. 124 fires occurred from unknown causes. 32 of them, with their very unusual oddities, attracted the attention of the famous metropolitan reporter, Nikita Aristarkhovich Sushkin, and his friend, the district police officer of the Vasilievsk police department, Yuri Mikhailovich Mozhaisky. But is the investigation they have undertaken capable of sorting out absolutely everything? And what kind of investigation is this, during which the truth does not come closer, but only small and not very facts multiply, ridiculous and not very events occur, and everything is cluttered so that a complete impression of chaos arises? Says the head of the Detective Police of St. Petersburg, Mikhail Frolovich Chulitsky.