The Trial

Five middle-aged men already converged in one platoon - people of different professions and different social status are called up as privates for three-month reserve training...

Lithuania, 1941. German tanks and motorized columns broke into the border military town. Seven Soviet soldiers were cut off from the garrison. Without food and weapons, they went through the occupied territory to the location of the Red Army units.

The conceit is that Sherlock Holmes is, as in reality, a fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle, but that the place where his office would be is maintained by the brilliant detective Shirley Holmes, who both solves crimes and maintains a museum for people who think Sherlock Holmes is real -- accompanied by a phonograph playing music from the Livanov series which had not long ended. She is accompanied, as might be expected, by a woman Watson, and must fight off the affections of both a Scotland Yard inspector an a parody Latin lover from Spain.

The plot is based on stories by B. Gorbachev: "The Trial of Stepan Grokhot," "Birth on Cucumber Land," "The Merchant Labas," and "The Great Flood." The main circumstance of the plot is five days of blizzard that began immediately after the arrival of a new boss at the Arctic construction site. The time of the action is 1935. A new manager arrives at a construction site that is in a state of crisis.