The Russian creator of the czarist master detective Erast Fandorin here introduces a new, irresistible sleuth. In a remote province of late 19th-century Russia, Bishop Mitrofanii has a family crisis on his hands: one of his great aunt`s rare white bulldogs has been poisoned on her estate, probably as an attack on the old woman. With a fistful of erratic family members and hangers-on as possible suspects, the bishop knows the only one who can solve the apparently clueless crime is Sister Pelagia—freckled, bespectacled, lively, curious, clumsy, and extraordinarily persistent.