The Winter Queen

Book 3 of the Russian Reading Challenge: Boris Akunin's The Winter Queen, the first in a series of mysteries set in the final decades of the 19th century. Akunin started publishing in Russia about 10 years ago, and gained massive popularity in a hurry, and TWQ first appeared in English in 2003. (At least a half dozen other Akunin titles are also available in translation.)

The book's protagonist is Erast Fandorin, a very young clerk in the Moscow police department. He is eager and curious, traits that lead him to investigate a simple suicide that proves to be anything but. The mystery has a variety of twists and discoveries, and while it's not particularly challenging, it is awfully fun. (I'd like to hear what others think of the ending though.)

A couple other aspects of the novel that I found noteworthy:
The suicide is a case of "American roulette," better known to most of us as Russian, and it prompted this observation by a rakish count: "It's stupid but exciting. A shame the Americans thought of it before we did." This led me to wonder about the origins of the term, and mini-research (Wikipedia, of course - and in Russian) suggests that Akunin is alone on the American origin thing, although there doesn't seem to be much evidence attaching it to Russia either. But it was still funny to me. (Also, a similar game of chance with gunplay is mentioned in Lermontov's A Hero of our Time - per Wiki the only instance of R.R. in Russian literature - but it's hard to call it quite the same thing, upon rereading the story.)

Aspects of the characters reminded me a great deal of Dostoevsky, particularly The Idiot, although also Bros. K. Fandorin has a shade of Myshkin-esque innocence to him, and he is also drawn to two distinct types of beauties. One is pure and fair, and of good family; the other is dark, corrupted, but utterly beguiling. And the latter has a train of roguish followers. Maybe I'm making too much of it though.

All in all though, an excellent challenge selection.

crossposted at RRC