The Great Hoax

Dagobert Trostler is a charming, intelligent, cool-headed, and slightly cynical amateur detective for whom solving crimes is not just a hobby, but a true way of life. Circumstances repeatedly force him to confront villains whose actions undermine the foundations of high society in the Austrian capital at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries or simply offend his pride as a detective. Dagobert's main weapon is his logical mind and observation skills. Whether investigating a banking fraud or the disappearance of cigars from a box in a smoking room, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that it gives him the opportunity to apply his knowledge and intellect.
Writer and journalist Baldwin Groller, the author of stories about the adventures of the Viennese detective, created this cycle over fifteen years, from 1895 to 1910, as a serial story published in literary magazines of Austria-Hungary, and became one of the pioneers of the detective genre in German-speaking literature. The complete collection of novellas about Dagobert Trostler has been translated into Russian for the first time.