Sixes die first

The writer consulted with the European champion in pistol shooting and carefully studied the book of A. B. Zhuk “Pistols and revolvers”. Despite this, after the release of the novel, outraged readers sent her letters, arguing that the Stechkin pistol does not exist ^[2] .

Dmitry Platonov, a member of the Economic Crimes Department, is suspected of killing his partner who worked with him in the case of Uralsk-18. Understanding that the materials of the case should in no case be put into extraneous hands, and also that, being free, he would rather sort things out than from the prison cell, Platonov embarks on the run. Dmitry meets a young woman who lets him in and is ready to help Platonov understand who framed him. An employee of MUR Anastasia Kamenskaya was entrusted to find Platonov. At the same time, Nastya is trying to figure out a sniper who kills young men every weekend outside the city limits.

G. Ponomareva draws attention to the gender aspect: “In detectives by A. Marinina, female characters are superior to men not only by number, but also by diversity of characters. In Marinina’s works, a woman is not so much a suffering side, not so much a victim, as an active subject, organizing circumstances, and not submitting to them. Such are the images of Kira Shevchenko’s “criminals” (“The sixes die first”), Natalia Tsukanova (“The bright face of death”), Regina (“Playing on a foreign field”), Sofia Illarionovna (“The name of the injured nobody”), etc. ^{[ 3]}

Translations

The translation into Swedish was done by Magnus Danberg (“De som dö först”. Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1999.) ^[4]

Screen adaptation

The TV version was released in 1999 as part of the first season of the television series "Kamenskaya" , directed by Yuri Moroz ^[5]