A summary of "House of Lonely Hearts" by Elena Mikhalkova

This book is a detective novel from 2007. The plot revolves around the dying game of an elderly writer who decides to use someone else’s hands to expose a criminal. Death here becomes merely a pretext for solving a sophisticated puzzle woven into five biographical stories. The work is part of the "Dasha Pronina Investigations" series, occupying the first issue. A second book, "Life Under a Foreign Sun," has also been added to this cycle.

A chance meeting and a strange inheritance

Dasha Pronina is walking through a forest near Moscow with her Neapolitan Mastiff, Prosha. The dog limps due to a congenital defect, but is intelligent and loyal. During their walk, Dasha meets an elegant elderly man, Pyotr Vasilyevich Borovitsky. The old man introduces himself as a journalist and writer. He explains that he is researching material for his new book.

His observation site is the nearby private nursing home "Pribrezhny." According to Pyotr Vasilyevich, the facility is known for its high prices and excellent patient care. Borovitsky invites Dasha to join him during his visits. She agrees, and they begin seeing each other regularly. The writer leaves notes for her in the hollow of an old pine tree, scheduling their meetings.

Pyotr Vasilyevich introduces Dasha to the residents of the boarding house. Each of them has complex personalities and a hidden history. Former ballerina Victoria Ilyinichna Okuneva blames the world for her failed career and conflict with her son. Overweight Irina Fedotovna Udenich devoted her entire life to foster children, who then abandoned her to a nursing home.

Former rector of the Polytechnic Institute, Ivan Sergeyevich Yakovlev, nicknamed "Viscount," observes the fish in the pond. Igor Kirillovich Gorgadze has a nasty temperament and constantly provokes conflicts. A local madman, Angel Ivanovich, wanders the grounds, hiding small trash in the ground and complaining about the lack of fried potatoes.

The establishment is managed by Lidiya Mikhailovna Raeva, a reserved, stern middle-aged woman. She is assisted by the head doctor, Boris Igorevich Denisov. Raeva has given the writer a separate office with a laptop, where he supposedly works on his text.

One day, Pyotr Vasilyevich doesn’t show up for a meeting at the pine tree. Alarmed, Dasha goes to the boarding house and finds Borovitsky dead. The old man is sitting in his office with a knife in his chest. The police begin an investigation, blaming the crime on a random burglar who climbed in through the window for a quick bribe.

Soon, Dasha is summoned to the notary. There, she meets the deceased’s sons, Gleb and Oleg. It turns out that Borovitsky left his Moscow apartment to Dasha, not to his biological children. The relatives are outraged and promise to contest the will. Dasha initially wants to relinquish the property to the legal heirs.

The notary hands her a sealed envelope from Pyotr Vasilyevich. Inside are several sheets of paper containing five short stories. Borovitsky asks Dasha to finish the book he started, hinting at the manuscript’s hidden meaning.

Five encrypted stories

Dasha carefully reads the notes left behind. The first story tells of a dim-witted girl, Lena, who saves her marriage from the advances of her envious neighbor, Alisa. The second describes young Irina, who lost her entire family in a car accident and found herself on the church porch. The third is dedicated to the business acumen of Diana, who built a video rental business with her husband. The fourth tells of Inna, who cared for an ailing elderly woman.

The fifth story is radically different from the others. The main character, Yana, learns of her beloved husband Anton’s infidelity. He leaves her for a younger woman, Sveta. Yana cold-bloodedly tracks down her rival and throws her from a height. Her husband, who discovers her body, takes the blame and is sent to prison.

Dasha realizes that Pyotr Vasilyevich has hidden the clue to his death in these texts. She decides to keep the apartment as the promised prize for finding the criminal. Her husband, Maxim, is skeptical of the idea but agrees to help solve the complex case.

Dasha begins visiting Pribrezhny under the pretext of gathering material for an article. Gorgadze openly tells her that he killed the writer because of an old family feud. However, Dasha doubts his words. Udenich dies of a heart attack after a nighttime walk. Dasha and Maxim assume that the nursing home staff are eliminating the patients.

The situation escalates. During a walk in the park, Dasha is chased by an unknown man in a leather jacket. She manages to escape. The next day, the same man stalks Dasha’s eleven-year-old daughter, Olesya.

Maxim intercepts the intruder at an abandoned playground. It turns out to be the writer’s grandson, Viktor. The young man admits he wanted to scare Dasha and force her to give up her apartment. Dasha’s family decides not to withdraw the police report, despite threats and bribery attempts by Borovitsky’s sons.

Solving the mystery of the boarding house

Dasha reaches a dead end. None of the women at the boarding house match the descriptions in the stories. Okuneva had never been married, and her former tutor, Rimma Sergeevna Krasnitskaya, turned out to be the writer’s longtime lover, whom he had happily forgotten.

The epiphany comes completely by chance. Dasha’s daughter asks her to find the second volume of the textbook, noticing that there’s only one story, but two books. Dasha realizes the true nature of the mystery. Borovitsky described not five different women, but five stages in the life of one man.

She writes the names of the female characters in a column: Lena, Irina, Diana, Inna, Yana. Their husbands’ names form a second column: Roman, Alexey, Egor, Viktor, Anton. The first letters form the first and last names: Lidiya Raeva.

Dasha immediately heads to the nursing home. Near the fence, she finds a commotion: the deranged Angel Ivanovich has crawled under the fence and died of a heart attack right there on the street. Lidiya Mikhailovna is sitting on the ground next to the body. The guards and nurses step aside.

Dasha reveals the whole truth to the manager. Angel Ivanovich is Anton, Rayeva’s husband. Decades ago, Rayeva killed his mistress, Sveta. Anton took the blame. Prison shattered his psyche, turning him into a pathetic madman. Rayeva, unable to forgive his betrayal, took her husband into her nursing home. For years, she reveled in his illness, making him suffer under the guise of caring.

Head Doctor Denisov knew this secret. In his youth, he had been friends with the murdered Sveta and had witnessed Raeva’s crime. Out of fear, Boris kept silent, and later took a job at the nursing home, blackmailing the manager with his silence. Denisov regularly bullied the ailing Anton, confiscating his hidden belongings.

The Writer’s Last Game

Borovitsky learned the truth from Anton during the old man’s rare moments of lucidity. The writer was terminally ill and wanted to hasten his death. He openly hinted to Raeva that he would remove Anton from the nursing home. The manager couldn’t bear to lose her victim and stabbed Pyotr Vasilyevich to death. The writer achieved his goal: he provoked Raeva into murder and left Dasha with a code to expose her.

Hearing the accusations, Raeva lunges at Dasha. Prosha knocks the manager down, defending her. Dasha calls off the dog and leaves. Left alone with her husband’s body, Lidiya Mikhailovna loses her reason for living. An enraged Denisov runs into the clearing. Realizing that Raeva might turn him over to the police for complicity and patient abuse, the doctor attacks her and strangles her. A security guard stuns Denisov with a blow to the head, but Raeva is already dead.

Dasha and Maxim are delighted with the successful ending. They decide to move into the new apartment left by Borovitsky in the spring and plan to buy bicycles for family rides. Ivan Sergeyevich Yakovlev packs his things and leaves the boarding house. He refuses to live out his days quietly and returns to a full life.