After a long absence, surgeon Maxim Mikhailov returns to his hometown to help his mother, who is suspected of having an early stage of Alzheimer’s. He gets a job at a local hospital, and on the very first day faces a serious test to operate a patient with a severe brain trauma. Maximov saves the girl, but when transferred to the nearby regional hospital, she dies under suspicious circumstances. The doctor launches his own investigation and finds out the dark truth behind the young woman’s death. It is the first case in a series of medical and criminal mysteries he is going to solve throughout the series. Maksimov is a talented doctor and a passionate person, but his methods are both outrageous and admirable. He keeps saving people’s lives performing the most challenging surgeries but, as it turns out, not everyone is happy about it.

The events of the film unfold first on the territory of China, in Manchuria, then transferred to the USSR, have an extensive geographical area: from Harbin to Leningrad, and cover the period from 1928 to 1953. The plot is based on the complex, full of dramatic events, the fate of a man — Boris, the son of an employee of the Chinese-Eastern Railway.

Petar Maras, the Belgrade drug lord, is in conflict with Red, the powerful state curator of the Serbian criminal world.

In the center of the plot is a senior investigator named Masha Shvetsova and her male colleagues. The plot is the most vital, but, like in “Streets of Broken Lanterns,” it is seasoned with a fair amount of humor - otherwise, how can the audience (and the heroes) endure countless morgues, identifications and other “cute” charms of the investigative routine?