The history of the Russian police dates back to the 17th century. It was then that Peter I established the corresponding service. Several reforms were carried out under different monarchs. In the second half of the 19th century, the St. Petersburg detective police appeared, which was created in the image and likeness of the French criminal police Surte Eugene Vidok. You can learn about how the Russian service worked and who headed it from the book of the masters of the historical detective Nikolai Svechin, Valery Vvedensky and Ivan Pogonin "Everyday life of the St. Petersburg detective police." The publication tells about various milestones in the formation of the service, about the cases under investigation and methods of work. In the process of creating the book, the authors turned to many sources, including memoirs, diaries, newspaper articles of those years, scientific works and archival documents. All this will allow the reader to find out how the St. Petersburg police acted at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, how the fate of the tsarist detectives developed, what cases became significant and went down in history.