A famous pianist, Nina, returns to her childhood apartment after her mother’s suicide. But the neighbor’s daughter—a mute girl named Masha—claims Nina’s mother was murdered. Nina begins to suspect everyone: the kindly doorman, her ex-husband, even Masha. The twist: Nina herself suffers from facial blindness (prosopagnosia), so she cannot trust what she sees.
In post-Soviet Moscow, a sound engineer named Ilya becomes obsessed with a mysterious, repetitive radio signal—the “Russian Woodpecker”—which he suspects is a mind-control device left over from the USSR. As he investigates, his own memories begin to warp, and reality fragments into conspiracy, family trauma, and state-sponsored gaslighting. agata kristi best books
In a remote Russian village, a young boy named Alyosha goes swimming in a radioactive lake (leftover from a secret nuclear dump). Years later, he hasn’t aged a day physically, but his mind matures normally—a “living corpse” trapped in a child’s body. The story follows his mother, a local detective, and a visiting biologist trying to uncover the lake’s true nature. A famous pianist, Nina, returns to her childhood