This novel is about revelations and revenge on a Volga Cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Confessions by a struggling American child psychologist and by a retired American ambassador with an exaggerated sense of importance and entitlement, now a university professor of practice with ethics his chosen specialty, are triggered by a tour of Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery.

At the beginning of a television episode of The Closer, viewers are told that everyone has something to confess. Some confessions, however, have serious consequences, as Francis Pickle and Neville Ogleby discover at the end of their ten-day cruise aboard the Novikov Priboi.

In the wings of this novel stands a Russian figure, father of the tour guide and friend of the study leader, who considers it an absolute duty to exact revenge for false accusations made years earlier by Ogleby and Pickle about an American whose ashes are interred in the Novodevichy cemetery alongside those of a KGB general.

Michael Rayback wanders from country to country with his Australian wife, Claudia. Their final destination is Russia, where they settle with two young children. Over time, Claudia begins to feel marginalized in her life at home. She views Michael as a house-husband and a slave to their daughters. In anger Claudia turns to a Russian businessman with money and power. Interested in Russian art, Claudia is attracted to Yuri's idea of smuggling icons across the border into Finland. Claudia gets caught. Yuri gets killed.

Claudia's defense at her trial is in the hands of an attractive young attorney, one of Michael's acquaintances. Claudia is suspicious, but Michael convinces her that Tanya is a brilliant trial lawyer with an impressive record of wins. Tanya's strategy rests on punishment, not on guilt or innocence. Central to Tanya's argument is a psychological profile of Claudia in the context of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.