A literally flag-bearing member of the Red Army which bloodily crushed Hitler's inner circle last stand in Berlin, war hero Leo Demidov became a blindly loyal member of Stalin's merciless repression police. Having refused to turn on his schoolteacher wife, Raisa, to be denounced as a dissident, he must cease his investigation of suspicious murders on 'missing', probably sexually abused boys, including a mate's son, which Leo refuses to help cover up blindly, as he 'follows' Raisa in exile, transferred to a rural town. Demoted to the deputy chief of the local police, he finds similarly strange deaths occur there, notably targeting the 'unthinkable' gay minority, and starts hunting fro a serial killer.—KGF Vissers