Following a previous investigation, which implicated those at the very top in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself hailed as an example to all. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace – if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to Siberia. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman on a film set in the Ukraine. The feared Commissar for State Security, Ezhov, wants the matter looked into. And when the detective arrives on the set for The Bloody Meadow, in the bleak, battle-scarred Ukraine, he soon discovers that there is more to her death than meets the eye…
