Synopsis: The Train to Zevka

Antonina Safin is a beautiful woman, or at least that is what he wants everyone else to think. Never quite able to reconcile his feelings with his sex, he dons the clothing and the identity of a woman – and, all too often and usually completely by accident, the persona of a skilled private detective.

Antonina's preternatural abilities of ratiocination and her hard-earned mastery of disguise have taken her to many strange places and stranger intrigues, and her only slightly anachronistic skill in swordplay has had its uses. But her life becomes truly interesting when she finds herself undertaking a diplomatic mission for a friend, on a train to the Eastern Empire – a journey on an infrequently-used rail line which takes five days to span thousands of miles of taiga and tundra.

The train has barely entered the wilderness when a high-ranking nobleman is murdered in his private car, his guard of Imperial soldiers taken completely by surprise. Now a letter known to be in his possession is missing, and an already tense political drama is about to explode into violence. But on the Eastern Frontier news travels at the speed of the railroad, and for better or worse the train isn't stopping. Safin has five nights to unmask the killer and find the letter or all hell will break loose.

But soon His Excellency is not the only corpse on board, and the tiny world of the train to Zevka becomes a dark microcosm for the intrigues of an empire. Can amateur inspector Safin unravel the mystery – while trying to keep the conflict between gender and sex from unraveling her – before she reaches the end of the line?