Ross Thomas, for the first time in the detective genre, introduced and established a new hero - the so-called Mediator. The intermediary Saint-Yves (the series was published under the pseudonym Oliver Blick) is not a detective or a police officer, but at the same time not a representative of the underworld, but a person who is trusted. The uniqueness of his position between two opposing camps allows him to solve original problems that are not available to ordinary detective heroes, and gives a sense of novelty to the genre itself. (The book’s text has been translated from the original language using an artificial intelligence system. In most cases, the translation is accurate and clear, but occasionally there may be incorrect phrasing or individual words left untranslated.