Murder on the Leviathan (Erast Fandorin) - Softcover

Akunin, Boris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812968794 ISBN 13: 9780812968798

Publisher: Random House Trade, 2005

Synopsis

Paris, 1878: Eccentric antiquarian Lord Littleby and his ten servants are found murdered in Littleby's mansion on the rue de Grenelle, and a priceless Indian shawl is missing. Police commissioner "Papa" Gauche recovers only one piece of evidence from the crime scene: a golden key shaped like a whale. Gauche soon deduces that the key is in fact a ticket of passage for the Leviathan, a gigantic steamship soon to depart Southampton on its maiden voyage to Calcutta. The murderer must be among its passengers.

In Cairo, the ship is boarded by a young Russian diplomat with a shock of white hair--none other than Erast Fandorin, the celebrated detective of Boris Akunin's The Winter Queen. The sleuth joins forces with Gauche to determine which of ten unticketed passengers on the Leviathan is the rue de Grenelle killer.

Tipping his hat to Agatha Christie, Akunin assembles a colorful cast of suspects--including a secretive Japanese doctor, a professor who specializes in rare Indian artifacts, a pregnant Swiss woman, and an English aristocrat with an appetite for collecting Asian treasures--all of whom are con?ned together until the crime is solved. As the Leviathan steams toward Calcutta, will Fandorin be able to out-investigate Gauche and discover who the killer is, even as the ship's passengers are murdered, one by one?

Already an international sensation, Boris Akunin's latest page-turner transports the reader back to the glamorous, dangerous past in a richly atmospheric tale of suspense on the high seas.

From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

Product Description

Paris, 1878. In a stately mansion on the rue de Grenelle, an eccentric antiquarian and nine members of his household are found murdered, and a precious Indian statue is missing. The only piece of evidence from the crime scene is a golden badge shaped like a whale. The trinket is in fact the emblem of the Leviathan, an enormous steamship soon to depart for Calcutta. Surely the murderer must be among its passengers. In Cairo, the ship is boarded by a young Russian diplomat with a slight stammer - none other than the intrepid detective Erast Fandorin. He joins forces with the Parisian police commissioner to find the killer. As the Leviathan steams toward its destination, will Fandorin be able to discover the identity of the killer, even as the ship's passengers are murdered one by one? Format izdaniya: 13,5 sm h 20,5 sm.

Review

In Boris Akunin's Murder on the Leviathan the former St Petersburg investigator Erast Fandorin (hero of The Winter Queen) competes for centre stage with a swell-headed French police commissioner, a crafty adventuress boasting more than her fair share of aliases, and a luxurious steamship that appears fated for deliberate destruction in the Indian Ocean.

Following the 1878 murders of British aristocrat Lord Littleby and his servants on Paris's fashionable Rue de Grenelle, Gustave Gauche, "Investigator for Especially Important Crimes," boards the double-engined, six-masted Leviathan on its maiden voyage from England to India. He's on the lookout for first-class passengers missing their specially made gold whale badges--one of which Littleby had yanked from his attacker before he died. However, this trap fails: several travellers are badgeless, and still others make equally good candidates for Littleby's slayer, including a demented baronet, a dubious Japanese army officer, a pregnant and loquacious Swiss banker's wife, and a suave Russian diplomat headed for Japan. That last is of course Fandorin, still recovering two years later from the events related in The Winter Queen. Like a lesser Hercule Poirot, "papa" Gauche grills these suspects, all of whom harbour secrets, and occasionally lays blame for Paris's "crime of the century" before one or another of them--only to have the hyper-perceptive Fandorin deflate his arguments. It takes many leagues of ocean, several more deaths, and a superfluity of overlong recollections by the shipmates before a solution to this twisted case emerges from the facts of Littleby's killing and the concurrent theft of a valuable Indian artefact from his mansion.

Like the best Golden Age nautical mysteries, Murder on the Leviathan finds its drama in the escalating tensions between a small circle of too-tight-quartered passengers, and draws its humour from their over-mannered behaviour and individual eccentricities. The trouble is, Akunin (the pseudonym of Russian philologist Grigory Chkhartishvili) doesn't exceed expectations of what can be done within those traditions. --J. Kingston Pierce, Amazon.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0812968794
• ISBN 13: 9780812968798
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240