Mystery Time — Janet Hannah

Mystery Time An American microbiologist dies on stage as he is about to lecture at a scientific congress in Prague, an apparent victim of local criminals. Professor Hildegard Kraus from Heidelberg and her Hungarian born colleague Alex Kertész from Jerusalem, who hear his last words, are left wondering whether one the the assembled scientists might be the real killer. Whoever it was has also taken Hildegard's watch, a treasured family keepsake with an intriguing history. Booklist said about The Wish to Kill, the first Alex Kertész mystery, "First novelist Hannah has hit upon an engaging premise;a mystery series starring a research scientist working at the University of Jerusalem. She has the makings of a good series: a sympathetic hero and an intriguing, nicely evoked setting." Murder with a French Accent, the second book in the series, takes Alex to a biotech company in Toulouse which runs into trouble trying to produce a genetically engineered strain of bacteria that he created. In Mystery Time, book number three, Alex and Hildegard are faced with two mysteries. One involves the death of their colleague and the other is the mystery surrounding the old watch and its special relationship to time.