This pulse-pounding thriller is set in two Ukraines: the one from 1986, a prisoner of the Soviet Empire, and the one from today, where armed conflict, economic collapse, and militant environmentalism set the scene.

In Pripyat, a former Soviet town in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, a horribly mutilated body is found hanging from one of the buildings. Two men must find the culprit, though their motivations are very different. One is Commander Melnyk, a Ukrainian policeman with a strong sense of justice and duty. The other is Alexandre Rybalko, a Russian cop recruited by the victim’s father to find and execute the murderer. It soon becomes clear that this murder is linked to another crime committed in 1986, a double homicide from the night the nuclear power plant exploded. The two investigations interlock like a puzzle where vengeance, manipulation, and intimidation are subtly orchestrated by a crazed killer as he racks up his victim count.