A summary of "The Frog King" by Elena Mikhalkova

Tatyana Tretyak’s Moscow architectural firm is renovating an old industrial building into the "Tsekh" sports center, but the city planning department has denied approval due to a violation of the building’s red line. Tatyana is married to programmer Ilya Kharlamov, and they have two children, nine-year-old Eva and six-year-old Anton. The family regularly spends weekends at Ilya’s parents’ dacha, Viktor Petrovich and Ulyana Stepanovna, outside Moscow. Ilya’s older sister, Varvara, a nurse; his younger sister, Kristina; and his elderly aunt, Lyudmila Vasilyevna (Lyusya), who suffers from arthritis, also live in the same building.

The atmosphere in the Kharlamov family is characterized by strict control by the domineering Ulyana Stepanovna and psychological pressure on the children. During one Sunday lunch, Kristina introduces her new forty-year-old boyfriend, Sergey, a huge man with a heavy jaw who claims to be a surgeon. Sergey quickly finds favor with Lyusya and wins Ulyana Stepanovna’s favor, and gives the children plastic figurines of a frog and a red panda.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, private investigators Makar Ilyushin and Sergey Babkin receive a request from Kristina Kharlamova. She asks them to investigate her sister Varvara’s fiancé, delivery driver Grigory Bogun, after witnessing him expelling an elderly homeless man from his dacha with unprovoked aggression and foul language. Babkin, after checking databases, discovers that Grigory Bogun, a native of the village of Zelenets, is clean.

To personally assess the suspect, Babkin, posing as Kristina’s new boyfriend, Sergei Ch. S., infiltrates the Kharlamov family dinner. During surveillance, Babkin notices Bogun exhibiting the habits of a former prisoner — a nervous reaction to sudden sounds and a distinctive look in his eyes. An attempt to secretly lift the suspect’s fingerprints fails: Bogun, with a practiced, professional gesture, carefully smears the fingerprints on the dishes and furniture.

Meanwhile, Masha Babkina’s friend, bookstore clerk Rita Tolobanova, is attacked. The day before, the store had received an exclusive print run of I. Varfolomeev’s novel "Songs of Angels of the Moscow Region." An unknown bearded man tried to buy all forty copies, but Rita set aside one for herself. That evening, in a deserted alley on Kantemirovskaya Street, a masked man beat Rita and took the book, ignoring her money. Makar Ilyushin joins the investigation and discovers that the entire remaining print run of the novel was hastily purchased from the warehouse of the Amina publishing house by an unknown person who bribed an employee.

Rita pulls out the electronic proof of the novel. Ilyushin, analyzing the saccharine plot of a lovesick rescuer who gradually transforms into an angel, discovers a coded phrase in the only illustration depicting the gates of heaven: "I didn’t invent these stories, and I’ll tell everyone about it." That night, the news reports the murder of Oleg Yurentsov, a translator who wrote science fiction. The detectives realize that Yurentsov was a ghostwriter hired to write the book, and that the novel contains real crimes.

Babkin goes to Bogun’s former workplace at Agro-Svet. There, it turns out that Bogun was simultaneously pursuing an accounting employee, Inna Daladze, who owned a car and an apartment, but abruptly abandoned her in April 2026 — that’s when Varvara Kharlamova got a flat tire in the parking lot, and Grigory came to her aid. Bogun’s colleague, Gleb Fedorenko, displays mortal terror when questioned, and Inna Daladze confesses to Babkin that Grigory threatened to kill her if she discussed him with anyone. Meanwhile, Ilyushin meets with investigator Alexei Istrik, who is handling the Yurentsov case.

Yurentsov was bludgeoned to death in the entryway of his apartment building. A hooded man posing as a delivery man was the perpetrator, but the lock to Yurentsov’s apartment malfunctioned, preventing the killer from gaining entry. A custom-made knife in a sheath was found on Yurentsov’s person — the writer had been waiting for the killer. It turns out that in May 2013, designer Svetlana Kapishnikova, who co-wrote short stories with Yurentsov, was stabbed to death in a parking lot, and it was Oleg who discovered her body. The novel’s chapter completely matches the details of that unsolved murder.

Ilyushin analyzes other chapters of "Songs of Angels" and finds clues to the other two murders. The Chronicler’s first victim was a lonely 74-year-old theater makeup artist, Nina Yelchukova, who was killed with a crystal vase in her three-room Stalin-era apartment on January 8, 2010, during the broadcast of the opening of the Burj Khalifa. The second victim was plasterer Dmitry Shelomov, killed by a paving stone in the entryway of the Uzbek café Zurna on July 13, 2018.

Ilyushin contacts director Yegor Oleynikov, the son of the late Soviet actress Liana, who was a close friend of Yelchukova and was suspected of murdering her for her inheritance. Oleynikov tells of the makeup artist’s nephew, the pretentious musician Ivan Yelchukov, who unsuccessfully demanded a share of the property sale from his aunt. Actor Demyan Shcherbatykh is also mentioned, attempting to write a memoir about Yelchukova with the help of the scandalous journalist Mark Pronin. It turns out that Pronin blackmailed Shcherbatykh with intimate photos, leading to the project’s closure, and that Volchok, Shcherbatykh’s personal stylist, was involved with the company in his youth.

Tragedy strikes the Kharlamovs’ dacha: their neighbor, Galina Yezhova, a keen herb grower, dies suddenly. The day before, she had brought the Kharlamovs a spinach and feta cheese pie. During dinner, Lyusya trips and falls, pulling the tablecloth down with her, causing dishes to break and food to scatter. Viktor Petrovich later picks up a piece of the pie from the floor and eats it, ending up hospitalized with severe food poisoning.

Traces of the deadly poisonous hemlock are found in the pie. The villagers conclude that Yezhova mistook the hemlock for chervil. Tatyana Tretyak, knowing Yezhova’s meticulousness, secretly enters her deserted house and finds reference notebooks proving that Galina thoroughly understood the differences between the two plants. Herbs were stored in Yezhova’s freezer. Tanya’s daughter, Eva, admits to seeing a flat green bag containing a strange mass in the Kharlamovs’ dacha refrigerator just before Viktor Petrovich was poisoned. Tatyana realizes that the hemlock was deliberately preserved and planted in Yezhova’s freezer by someone in the Kharlamov house. In Yezhova’s bedroom, Tatyana finds Eva’s rubber panda, which the girl had previously given to her grandmother.

When questioned, Ulyana Stepanovna lies and claims she came to check the gas. Tatyana discovers receipts for erotic literature in the bookcase and realizes that Viktor Petrovich had been secretly courting Yezhova in August, bringing her flowers and cakes. Out of jealousy, Ulyana Stepanovna staged her rival’s murder and deliberately allowed her unfaithful husband to eat the poisoned piece of food to sober up.

Babkin flies to Kazan, and from there to Syktyvkar and the village of Zelenets. A local resident, Marina, recognizes the real Grigory Bogun in a photo from a Kazan New Year’s newspaper — a kind, sober man who left to work. No one in the village knows the man living under Bogun’s name in Moscow. Babkin learns that in August 2016, the bathhouse of the Shchukin brothers, local alcoholics, burned down in Ust-Chekana, and three charred bodies were found there.

Arsk investigator Ruslan Chebotarev opens an archived file. It turns out that the third person listed as dead was Nikolai Golovanov. In 2008, 22-year-old Golovanov was sentenced to eight years for human smuggling: eight Afghan refugees, including three children, suffocated in a secret compartment of his truck due to greed and lack of air. Released in August 2016, Golovanov drank at the Shchukin family’s, where he invited his Kazan colleague, Grigory Bogun.

When the Shchukins and Bogun died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a bathhouse, Golovanov stole Bogun’s documents, set fire to the building to conceal the evidence, and fled, burying the real Grigory in his place. Using his mother’s money, he altered the database, adding his photo under a false name, but was forced to conceal his fingerprints. Golovanov set his sights on Varvara Kharlamova, hoping to obtain her Moscow inheritance and free medical care for his aging mother.

Ilyushin asks stylist Volchok and actress Dombrovskaya for details of a long-ago incident. In May 1995, at a student party hosted by Elchukova, 14-year-old Ivan Yelchukov, who was in love with Ella, brought her lilacs, but Yegor Oleynikov played a cruel joke, flicking Ivan’s back with the elastic of his underwear. The teenager vomited all over Ella’s expensive shoes and then attempted to hang himself from the bedroom chandelier, but was saved by Shcherbatykh. A few months later, Polina Gribaleva, who was getting ready for a date with Yegor and dressed in an exact imitation of his late mother Liana’s style, was brutally murdered. Ilyushin connects the dots: Yelchukova, Kapishnikova, and Gribaleva all wore Liana Oleynikova’s rare vintage perfumes, "L’Heure Bleue" and "L’Air du Temps."

The insane Yegor Oleynikov, who idolized his mother and lost his mind after her suicide, perceived this scent as a sign of a doppelganger attempting to steal Liana’s image, and he flew into a blind rage. Shelomov was killed because his lover jokingly sprayed him with her perfume before leaving, and Oleynikov reacted to the strong feminine scent. Realizing that Yurentsov had deciphered his notes and planted the key in an illustration, Oleynikov covered his tracks by killing the writer and lawyer Kotlyar. Ilyushin met Oleynikov in a café, wearing Liana’s perfume. Oleynikov lost control, lunged at the detective, screaming about dolls, and was apprehended by Babkin and the police.

At the dacha, Tatyana Tretyak shares her suspicions with Lyusya, who puts on a show for her, claiming to have heard Ilya cover for Ulyana Stepanovna after Yezhova’s poisoning. Trusting her husband, Tatyana searches Lyusya’s room. On the back of an old cutting board with a burnt-out bunny pattern, she discovers ingrained juice and the strong, mousy scent of fresh hemlock. Lyusya herself cut the poison in her room and poisoned her friend Galya, as Yezhova accidentally overheard her conversation with her son, Nikolai Golovanov (the fake Bogun), and learned the truth about their substitution. Lyusya was Golovanov’s secret mother, born to the artist Akhmetov. She gave him to Liana Oleynikova in 1986, and after his prison sentence, she orchestrated his marriage to Varvara.

Golovanov notices Tatyana’s surveillance, lures her to an unfinished construction site under the pretext of rescuing a white kitten, and begins strangling her with a cord. Ilyushin and Babkin, having identified Golovanov from the database, arrive at the construction site just in time, subdue the criminal, and rescue Tatyana. At the Kharlamov house, Ulyana and Viktor Petrovich, instead of being horrified by the revealed truth, begin looting, dividing the jewelry Ulyana stole from the late Yezhova’s house, and acquit Golovanov. Ilya, realizing his parents’ moral decline, takes Tatyana and the children and sever ties with the family forever. Babkin returns to Moscow, where Masha tells him she is pregnant.