The City Rate (Городской тариф)
by Alexandra Marinina
Synopsis
It seemed like a simple case: a second-rate businessman killed his lover and fled. Finding him is only a matter of time. But the more Anastasia Kamenskaya and her colleagues find out about the characters involved in this story, the more intriguing this crime begins to look. Maybe this was not a run-of-the-mill homicide after all: behind it one can see the obscure contours of an organised system, mercilessly tearing apart human lives. In this system everything has a price, including human life. And life is cheap. Kamenskaya has no idea that her value has also been calculated, and she is now an unwilling player in a massive, cynical game, the result of which is impossible to guess...