Vil Lipatov, the son of a journalist, was born in Siberia in 1927. Siberia is the great love of his life, the background of all his stories. "Mint," "The Rod," "A Stranger" and others all bring the reader into contact with the vast expanses of Siberia, the stark beauty of its rivers and forests, and the strong, courageous people that inhabit it - fishermen, rivermen, tractor-drivers and lumberjacks. Fyodor Aniskin, the hero of this book, is a divisional militia inspector who has been at his post in a small Siberian village for forty years. In the foreword to this book Lipatov writes: "I hope the reader will like my native Siberia, the cold Narym Area, and will appreciate the kind hearts and basic goodness of the wonderful people of Siberia." "I might add that I am sorry to see Fyodor Aniskin appear in print, for I feel that I am losing him. But a writer's greatest happiness is in sharing his joy with others." These are rowdy, merry tales... We are given an amazing insight into everyday villagelife as we come to know the village militia inspector Aniskin, solid, enormously fat, unexpectedly agile, with a keen mind, a heart of gold and a conscience that is never wanting." - Literaturnaya Gazeta (April 1968) The village militia inspector Aniskin shares all the glorious traits of the famed Sherlock Holmes: a professionally keen eye, the ability to reconstruct events from a single detail, a logical mind and an inborn understanding of people." - Moskovsky Komsomolets (March 1968) "The book combines the attributes of the adventure and detective story with a contemporary view of village life, the lyrical qualities of rural prose, its unhurried pace, and reflections on the fate of the villageof today." - Komsomolskaya Pravda (July 1968)