The Russian creator of the czarist master detective Erast Fandorin here introduces another irresistible sleuth in the form of an orthodox nun 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 person able to unravel the apparently clueless crime is Sister Pelagia — freckled, bespectacled, lively, curious, clumsy, and extraordinarily persistent.