The Dean of a Swiss university persuades Sherlock Holmes to investigate the background of a would-be lecturer. To Dr. Watson it seems a very humdrum commission - but who is the mysterious 'Lieserl'? How does her existence threaten the ambitions of the technical assistant level III in Room 86 at the Federal Patents Office in Berne by the name of Albert Einstein? The assignment plunges Holmes and Watson into unfathomable Serbia to solve one of the intractable mysteries of the 20th Century. In Tim Symonds' previous detective novels, Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer At Scotney Castle and Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Bulgarian Codex the author based pivotal historic facts and a principal character on real life. So too in this new mystery

It's 1906. Far from England, the Ottoman Empire ruled by the despotic Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid 11 is on the verge of imploding. Rival Great Powers, especially Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, sit watching like crows on a fence, ready to rush in to carve up the vast territories, menacing England's vital overland routes to her Indian possessions. At his medical practice in London's Marylebone Watson receives a mystifying telegram. It's from Holmes

На Бейкер-стрит появляется высокий гость, прибывший из Болгарии, чтобы призвать Шерлока Холмса и доктора Уотсона на поиски пропавшего древнего евангелия. Такова завязка детективного романа современного английского автора Тима Саймондса. А еще один автор, Дэвид Раффл, выстраивая последний диалог между умирающим Уотсоном и его другом, открывает читателю весьма неожиданные эпизоды их биографии