"Angel’s Tear" by Tatyana Korsakova, summary Automatic translate

This book is a mystical detective story, created in 2007, combining elements of a modern thriller and medieval Gothic, where an ancient family curse intertwines with criminal events in modern-day Moscow. A key detail of the text is the parallel narrative, linking the fate of the protagonist, Svetlana Korneeva, across centuries, with the story of the French crusader knight, René de Bernis. The work is distinguished by its dynamic plot, detailed descriptions of the psychological state of the characters under the influence of hypnosis, and a deep dive into the anatomy of human passions and vices.

An unexpected message

Svetlana Korneeva, a biology student with a rare genetic disorder — albinism — works as a croupier in a Moscow casino. Her familiar, albeit grueling, life, split between night shifts and daytime studies, is shattered when she finds a strange, smoky-gray letter in her mailbox. Written in calligraphic handwriting and blood-red ink, the message contains vague allegories about angels, shining stones, and the arrival of a chosen virgin. Sveta’s friend, Rita Zavyalova, dismisses the discovery lightly, infatuated with her new, extremely wealthy and enigmatic admirer, who takes her on dates out of town in a luxurious black car with a red leather interior. Meanwhile, the dean of the department begins openly harassing Svetlana during lectures, demanding perfect note-taking and threatening her with Saturday detentions. His wife, Marya Sanovna, a professor, conducts a harassing face check on her and expels her from class. To protect herself, Svetlana asks her friend Alexey, a casino CCTV operator, to record incriminating evidence of the drunken dean, who is squandering his money at the gambling table.

The Mathematician and the Night Attack

A suspiciously lucky client, Vitaly Saburin, shows up at the casino where Svetlana works. He operates under a strict "win-win system" devised for him by his childhood friend, Arseny, a talented mathematician confined to a wheelchair. Saburin successfully wins large sums, trying to avoid the attention of the guards and the head of security, nicknamed Borman. Svetlana, noticing Saburin’s focused gaze, realizes he’s calculating the game, and during her shift at another table, directly asks him about the system, warning him of danger. The dealer’s supervisor, Angelina Leonidovna, informs Svetlana that her apartment, which, according to the janitor, Mitrich, can be opened with a fingernail, has flooded her troublesome neighbor, Adelaida Karlovna, downstairs. Frightened by the complaints, she leaves her shift early and walks through the dark park to the taxi depot. In an alley, she is attacked by three unknown men in black, led by a pale creature named Rem, whose sharp fangs and glowing red eyes Sveta notices. The attacker puts her into a deep hypnotic trance, calling her by the name Claire and demanding the return of a certain "Angel Tear."

Sabourin’s intervention and salvation

Saburin, who left the casino shortly after Svetlana, notices her hasty retreat to the park and decides to follow her, grabbing a Makarov pistol. Hearing a muffled female scream and the eerie, insane laughter of a girl in a trance, Vitaly intervenes. Rem opens fire on him, the bullet hitting the trunk of a linden tree, but Saburin wounds the attacker with a return shot, after which the trio quickly escape. Vitaly carries the unconscious Svetlana to his car and brings her to Arseny’s apartment, as he himself has no experience with women due to his many insecurities. Svetlana is in a catatonic stupor, unresponsive to the computer’s visual effects and the pendulum, but Silantiy, Arseny’s one-eyed and perpetually unfriendly cat, unexpectedly climbs into her lap and begins purring. To break Svetlana’s trance, Saburin, on a friend’s advice, gives her a hard slap. Coming to, the frightened girl bites Vitaly’s arm, kicks him in the groin, and douses him with water from a can, mistaking the men for bandits. After a heated argument, Saburin throws Svetlana out the door, believing her to be crazy. She spends the rest of the night on the cold steps of the building, her teeth chattering from the dampness.

The historical line of René de Bernis

The text unfolds in parallel, set in the late 11th century. A young French knight, René de Bernis, along with his older brother, Hugo, listens to Abbot Alanus and their aging father, whose hands resemble bird’s claws due to a family curse — porphyria, which manifests itself as an intolerance to sunlight and a thirst for blood. His father gives René his war sword and Hugo’s black-maned horse, Hurricane, so that his youngest son can go on a crusade to atone for the sins of his ancestors. Hugo, his face scarred by pockmarks, punches his brother in the stomach and promises to take away his beloved, Claire, their father’s ward. René sets out for Jerusalem via Constantinople and Antioch, enduring famine, cold, epidemics, and brutal battles under the leadership of Count Raymond of Toulouse and the one-eyed knight, Jean de Moly. During the assault on Jerusalem, René encounters a local girl with white hair and clear eyes on the deserted streets. She gives him an ancient ring with a large, living, and shifting stone — the Tear of an Angel. The ring heals René of his ulcers and bloodlust, but awakens a maddening lust in Jean de Moly. René kills Jean with a sword thrust, taking the ring for himself. Eighteen years later, Claire dies, and René, finding his stepson Armand holding a dagger over his newborn son’s cradle, strangles the young man, realizing he has given his soul to the stone.

Investigation in Moscow

Returning home, Svetlana finds her apartment in disarray after the emergency services arrived. She gives a hundred-ruble note to the janitor, Mitrich, and endures an attack from Adelaida Karlovna, who accuses her of damaging antique furniture and Vasnetsov. That afternoon, Sveta hands over the incriminating disc to the dean, thereby exempting herself from detention. Soon, the crime news reports a ritualistic serial murder in the Moscow region: the bloodless body of a young woman in a turquoise dress with stab wounds to her neck has been discovered. Svetlana, horrified, recognizes Rita. The lights go out in her apartment, the landline goes dead, but her mobile receives a call from the dead Rita, demanding to open the door. The creature behind the door calls her Claire and tries to pick the lock, scraping metal. Svetlana barricades the hallway with a heavy chest of drawers and slams her cane against the radiator, eliciting screams from Adelaida Karlovna, which causes the creature to flee. Janitor Mitrich and neighbors with flashlights confirm they saw a fleeing man dressed all in black. Meanwhile, Saburin makes inquiries through his police friend, Mikhail Shamanov, and learns that the bodies of seven bloodless girls have indeed disappeared from the morgue, and that Captain Zolotarev never existed in the police force.

Trip to Zyabrovka

Svetlana meets with the group leader, Ivan Rozhok, in a brightly lit pastry shop. Ivan passes the "garlic test," proving his humanity, but confesses that Rem injected him with a slow-acting poison and will die in three days unless Sveta gives the Prince the Angel’s Tear. Saburin intercepts Svetlana after the meeting, driving her away in his car to avoid surveillance. Svetlana reminisces about the old abandoned Korneev house in the village of Zyabrovka in the Tver region, where her grandfather Mikhail hid her mother’s belongings. On the way, Saburin pays off a principled traffic police inspector with a banknote tucked into his driver’s license. In Zyabrovka, they meet a lonely old woman, Tikhonovna, and her dog, Mukha, and buy groceries at the Lipovka supermarket, a bag of feed for her piglet, and a bottle of vodka from a plump saleswoman. In the Korneev house, overgrown with burdock, Saburin picks the barn lock, and Svetlana finds a metal chest in the stove containing photographs and the diary of her mother, Angela. After spending the night at Tikhonovna’s on an antique iron bed with cornflowers, a sauna, and drinking homemade moonshine made with twelve herbs, they return to Moscow. From the diary, Sveta learns that her mother was a swindler who plied her trade with clonidine, became pregnant by a wealthy Frenchman with an aristocratic pallor and unusual eyes, stole his ring, and came to hate her newborn albino daughter. She then committed suicide by jumping from a bridge into the river.

Interchange at an estate near Moscow

Svetlana realizes that the Angel’s Tear has been hidden inside the silver knob of her grandfather’s cane all this time. She presses the secret spring, extracts the ring, leaves Sabourin three thousand dollars on the table, and voluntarily leaves in the Batman Mobile with the Prince’s messenger for his country estate on the riverbank. The Prince turns out to be her biological father, Armand de Berny, transformed into a deformed monster with a shark-like mouth due to porphyria. In the basement of the house, lit by torches and the blue flames of the fireplace, Sveta gives him the ring in exchange for Ivan’s life. However, it turns out that Ivan willingly betrayed her for the Prince’s money, and Rita is long dead — her role was played by an actress in makeup.

Saburin, along with divers and special forces, storms the estate. He knocks out Rem, takes his Kabbalistic medallion, black robe, and explosive remote control, enters the basement, and knocks out Ivan and Zolotarev. The prince attempts to escape on a motorboat, but under fire, he drops an Angel’s Tear on the muddy riverbed and drowns, carried away by a silver cocoon of moonlight. Saburin brings Svetlana to a professor of psychiatry, who brings her out of a dangerous trance programmed to self-destruct. A year later, Svetlana and Vitaly live happily in a completely renovated and cheerful house in Zyabrovka, swimming in the emerald-green water of the lake among blooming lilies.