A REVIEW BY DAVID L. VINEYARD:         


BORIS AKUNIN – Murder on the Leviathan. Random House, hardcover, April 2004; trade paperback, February 2005. Translated by Andrew Bromfield.

BORIS AKUNIN

    One of the unexpected benefits of the fall of the former Soviet Union was the career of Russian mystery writer Boris Akunin, with his novels about Erast Fandorin now available in the west.

    Akunin is Grigori Chkhartichvili, a philologist, critic, essayist, and Japanese translator, who took advantage of the new freedom in Russia to create a popular series about 19th Century sleuth Erast Fandorin, a special agent of the Russian Police whose adventures take him from his youth to middle age and from Moscow to exotic adventures around the globe.

    Attractive, smart, and devastating to women, Fandorin is a human and likable hero who combines elements of James Bond, the original Nick Carter, The Wild West, and Ellery Queen in his bright clever adventures.

    The books veer from wild adventure to more or less straight detection, from con men to serial killers, and find Fandorin at various stages in his illustrious career, often caught between clever villains, dangerous beautiful women, and his own devious superiors.

BORIS AKUNIN

    It’s no surprise Ruth Rendell has called Akunin the Russian Ian Fleming.

    In Murder of the Leviathan Akunin takes a note from Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming. When Lord Littleby and his family are found murdered in their mansion on the Rue de Grenelle in Paris in 1878, the legendary French sleuth “Papa” Gauche finds his only clue to the crime is a key in the shape of a golden whale, a ticket on the luxury steamship the Leviathan leaving Southampton on its maiden voyage to Calcutta.

    Arriving at Southampton and boarding the Leviathan, Papa Gauche finds himself joined by Erast Fandorin, a handsome callow Russian sleuth with a shock of white hair. It’s a reluctant teaming on Gauche’s part, though he admits Fandorin might be useful. He might be even more reluctant if he knew Fandorn was a walking arsenal of hidden weapons, and something of a genius at crime solving.

    I see that I did not finish writing about Mr. Fandorin. I do believe I like him, despite his nationality. Good manners, reticent, knows how to listen. He must be a member of that estate referred to in Russia by the word intelligenzia …

    Fandorin is a contrast to Papa Gauche, who lives up to his name:

    Gray haired, bloated, and decidedly not good-looking …

    But the two form a working relationship, and Gauche soon comes to respect Fandorin’s wisdom and intelligence.

BORIS AKUNIN

    There are ten un-ticketed passengers on the Leviathan, and one of them is the killer: the Japanese doctor, the professor who deals in rare Indian artifacts, a pregnant Swiss woman, a wealthy Englishman who collects Asian antiquities, being among them. And then in true Christie style the passengers on the Leviathan begin to die at the hand of the desperate killer.

    These books feature grand villains, femme fatales, desperate espionage, and action enough for a dozen books. The Fandorin tales are great fun, playful and intelligent, as Alan Furst said, as if Tolstoy had set out to write a murder mystery. Fandorin is a cross between Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, d’Artagnan, and a Dostoevsky hero, brilliant, swashbuckling, and romantically melancholy.

    I’m not sure anyone in the west is writing anything like Akunin’s Fandorin novels, but thankfully we have them, and so far of the eleven books in the series, at least eight have been translated, with five published so far in the US. Akunin has also written a trilogy about Sister Pelagia, all of which are now available in English.

    Get acquainted with him. His books are literate, playful, and page turning reads. You will find nothing quite like him and no one quite like Erast Fandorin in Western literature — more’s the pity.

    It’s not often you find a writer or a hero who can honestly be said to mix elements of dime novels, Ian Fleming, Dostoyevsky, Dumas, and Ellery Queen, but Akunin and Fandorin manage the feat. There is nothing else quite like them on the shelves.

       The Erast Fandorin series. [Note that so far only the first five have been published in the US.]

1. The Winter Queen (2003)
2. The Turkish Gambit (2004)

BORIS AKUNIN

3. Murder on the Leviathan (2004)
4. The Death of Achilles (2005)
5. Special Assignments (2007)

BORIS AKUNIN

6. The State Counsellor (2008)
7. The Coronation (2009)
8. The Lover of Death (2009)

       The Sister Pelagia series

1. Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (2006)

2. Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (2007)
3. Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (2008)