A Place in the Sun by Polina Dashkova, summary

The detective novel "A Place in the Sun" was written in 1999. The author explores the mechanisms of cruel calculation and cynicism hidden behind the façade of bohemian life and respectability. The plot revolves around the intersecting destinies of people from completely different social strata of post-Soviet Moscow. In 2004, director Ali Khamraev adapted the novel into an eight-part television film of the same name.

The death of Gleb Kalashnikov

One September night, prima ballerina Ekaterina Orlova is driving home after the premiere of "Lady Macbeth." Her inebriated husband, Gleb Kalashnikov, the owner of a prestigious Moscow casino, is sitting next to her. A muffled gunshot rings out from the bushes near the entrance to their building on Meshchanskaya Street. Gleb collapses in his wife’s arms and dies from a head wound.

The case was assigned to city prosecutor’s investigator Yevgeny Chernov and police major Ivan Kuzmenko. The initial investigation points to a contract killing connected to Kalashnikov’s criminal activities.

Katya recalls the past. She had known Gleb since early childhood. At twenty, the ballerina had a passionate affair with forty-three-year-old economist Yegor Barinov. The relationship ended on the eve of 1989, when Katya caught her lover in his office with the masseuse Svetlana. Insulted, Katya went to Peredelkino to live with Kalashnikov and soon agreed to marry him.

Suspects and criminal circles

The investigation turns to crime boss Valery Lunkov, nicknamed "Lunyok," who had been the unofficial guardian of the deceased’s casino. Shortly before the tragedy, Chechen crime boss Golub attempted to seize control of the gambling establishment and planted his man, Prince Nodar Dotoshvili, in its ranks.

Kalashnikov, through stripper Lyalya Rykova, lured Nodar into a card game and forced him to lose fifty thousand dollars, putting him in his debt. Lunek captured Dotoshvili and used his testimony against Golub.

Two weeks before the tragedy, Katya began receiving anonymous threatening phone calls from an unknown woman calling her a "dried-up Giselle." Then, outside a store, a supposed beggar approached the ballerina and warned her of a deadly curse. After ripping open her own pillow, Katya and her housekeeper, Zhanna, discovered a funeral ribbon, a candle stub, and coffin wood.

Olga Guskova and the Grishechkin tragedy

Major Kuzmenko traces the deceased man’s secret lover, a twenty-three-year-old philosophy student named Olga Guskova. Guskova lost her parents, both officers, to death in Afghanistan and was left alone to care for her senile grandmother, Ivetta Tikhonovna.

In January 1997, Gleb’s young stepmother, film actress Margarita Krestovskaya, brought his childhood friend Olga to their dacha outside Moscow, where she introduced her to her stepson. Passion flared between them. Olga, tormented by the realization of her adultery, begged her lover for a divorce, but was refused.

The casino manager, Felix Grishechkin, was hopelessly in love with Olga. In his diary, he meticulously documented her emotional turmoil, her words about her father’s pistol, and her willingness to resolve the love triangle with bloodshed.

Fearing for Guskova’s safety, Grishechkin comes to her apartment and takes her Makarov pistol to hide it. Spotting Major Kuzmenko in the courtyard, the terrified manager tries to escape in his car, veers off the road, and is killed in a collision with a truck. A ballistic analysis of the pistol found in his briefcase reveals that it was the same one used to kill Kalashnikov.

A false trail and new victims

Olga is arrested. During interrogation, she admits moral guilt for her lover’s death but denies the shooting. Chernov considers the case practically solved, but Kuzmenko remains doubtful.

A homeless man named Boriska, who lived in the courtyard, tries to blackmail the real killer, claiming he witnessed the shot fired from a children’s wooden playhouse. The criminal leaves him a bottle of poisoned vodka on a bench, and the homeless man dies of intoxication.

Katya receives a call from a blackmailer demanding three thousand dollars for the name of the person who ordered the calls. The extortionist fails to show up. The ballerina, along with her longtime secret admirer, programmer Pavel Dubrovin, goes to the market in search of masseuse Svetlana Petrova, whose voice was heard on the phone. It turns out that Svetlana disappeared without a trace on Saturday evening. Her body, showing signs of strangulation, is soon found in a vacant lot in Konkovo.

That night, Katya receives another threatening call from a woman mimicking the late Svetlana’s intonation. Orlova realizes the caller is imitating the victim’s voice and trying to provoke the ballerina into testifying against Olga.

Exposing the plan

Kuzmenko visits Ivetta Tikhonovna in the psychiatric hospital. The elderly woman recounts that the day before the tragedy, a thin young man with a neat mustache and a leather cap came to see them, claiming to be a representative of a veterans’ aid fund. Under the pretext of checking documents, he opened a desk drawer containing a weapon. A saleswoman at a street kiosk in Konkovo also recalls that the deceased Petrova got into a dark car driven by a man wearing a man’s leather cap.

Yegor Barinov arrives at Orlova’s in a panic and confesses that Lunek suspects him of killing Kalashnikov because of the existence of a hidden video recording of orgies at the dacha of the crime boss Korzh. Katya breaks into her husband’s safe and finds the tape. The five-year-old video shows Barinov, the masseuse Svetlana, and nineteen-year-old Margarita Krestovskaya.

Pavel Dubrovin and Katya reconstruct the crime. Gleb blackmailed his young stepmother with a compromising recording, threatening to reveal the truth to their father. This would have ruined Margo’s chances of a huge inheritance and social status.

The actress, a professional with weapons and stunts, devised a plan: she entered Guskova’s apartment disguised as a courier, stole a pistol, forced Svetlana to call Orlova with threats, and then planted a charmed pillow in the bedroom.

On the night of the crime, Krestovskaya left her car in a paid parking lot at Sheremetyevo-2 Airport, secretly returned to the city, shot her stepson near his home, and made it to a flight to Paris before boarding closed.

Denouement

Having learned from Lunka about Gleb’s will in favor of his widow, Margarita decides to eliminate her rival. At night, she breaks into Orlova’s apartment and attempts to strangle the ballerina with a cord, but a noise on the stairs frightens her attacker. Katya finds refuge with Dubrovin.

In the morning, Margo lies in wait for Orlova in her car. At gunpoint, the actress forces Katya to handcuff her, get into the backseat, and drive her out of town. The car stops at an abandoned cemetery near a dug grave. Krestovskaya demands to know the location of the incriminating tape.

As the criminal points her gun at her victim, detectives led by Kuzmenko and Dubrovin, who had been following the car, appear at the cemetery. Refusing to surrender, Margarita fires at the police officers and is killed by the lieutenant’s return fire.

Olga Guskova is released. She picks up her sick grandmother from the clinic and returns home.