Gentle Axe

St Petersburg. The winter of 1866.

Two frozen bodies are found in Petrovsky Park - a dwarf neatly packed in a suitcase, and a burly peasant hanging from a tree. Police Detective Porfiry Petrovich begins his investigation in the city's squalid brothels and drinking dens but is soon led into an altogether more genteel stratum of society - and to a shocking discovery which reveals the city's darkest secrets.