Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes

A rabbi's granddaughter missing, feared murdered . . . a Jew wrong-fully accused of espionage . . . a shtetl teenager kidnapped and sold into prostitution in Turkey . . . in a far corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, crime is rampant and Jews are at their wit's end. Enter super-sleuth Max Spitzkopf, passionate defender of his people. Brave, ingenious, and a master of disguise, Spitzkopf's crime-solving adventures take him from an Alpine fortress to the sewers of Vienna, and into casinos, brothels, dungeons, and monasteries. Giving a unique twist to a beloved literary genre, the fifteen Spitzkopf mysteries enthralled Yiddish readers over a century ago. Reading these page-turning tales, with their linguistic verve and historical charm masterfully rendered in Mikhl Yashinsky's translation, it's easy to see why the young Isaac Bashevis Singer raced to his Warsaw newsstand to catch each new episode.