Life at Home: Or the Family and Its Members (1870)

Three hoodlums with Eastern European accents enter a thirties-themed coffee shop in a struggling section of Los Angeles and attack an inoffensive history teacher who has just received a mysterious parcel from a Chinese political refugee. This ominous cascade of events was set in motion by Alexei Toporov, a survivor of the Russian gulag, who conflates his lost lover with a revolutionary heroine who was assassinated in the early twentieth century. His decades-long search for the truth is taken up by the unorthodox community college instructor and martial arts expert Carl Miller. The latter is joined by a colorful team of associates, including the beautiful Fleur Duan, a graduate student with enigmatic connections. The seekers must contend with lethal competition from underworld syndicates that covet a priceless Baltic artifact somehow linked to the political murder, and intelligence agencies determined to bury an inconvenient past.