Aleksandr Yatsenko

Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society, frequently called upon to wield a pistol as a surrogate in duels at dawn. But when Yakovlev meets the naïve young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto undetected emotions. What transpires uncovers a series of revelations about his past and his present self.

A struggling writer in 1930s Soviet Moscow finds his life transformed when a mysterious professor arrives with his bizarre entourage, including a wisecracking trickster, a deadly assassin, a vampire maid, and a giant talking black cat, turning the city upside down while exposing the hypocrisy of those in power.