Murder on the Leviathan by Boris Akunin
Sep. 24th, 2006 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
On 15th March Lord Littleby, an English eccentric and collector, is found murdered in his Paris house together with nine members of his staff. A gold whale is found in the victim's hand - a badge owned only by first class ticket-holders on the maiden voyage of the Leviathan, the world's largest steamship.
Commissioner Gauche of the French police is called to solve the 'Crime of the Century' and narrows the syspects down to ten, who are forced to eat every meal together in the ship's Windsor Suite. Amongst these ten is the elegant young Erast Fandorin. Can he discover the murderer's identity before Gauche?
Having been unimpressed with Fandorin's debut in The Winter Queen, I was a little dubious about reading his second adventure, but I am pleased that I did as it's proved to be a very pleasant and entertaining read. Akunin tells the story from a number of perspectives - including Commissioner Gauche, a mysterious Japanese man called Aono, an English spinster called Clarissa Stamp, an English baronet called Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes and an attention-seeking pregnant woman called Renate Kleber. Whilst this could be distracting, Akunin does it well and the effect is to maintain the pace and the tension, particularly as the reader knows that any one of these narrators could in fact be the murderer ...
There are plenty of twists and turns to the plot (which I found to be reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile) but Akunin's real genius is in keeping Fandorin as a background character, someone to whom the narrators react to rather than someone who drives forward the plot (as was the case in The Winter Queen). As a result, I found Fandorin to be a much more likeable character than in the previous book - here he has a dry wit and his intelligence is allowed to show through without us being bashed on the head with it. In particular, there are a number of scenes revolving around a grotesque clock modelled on Big Ben's Tower and Fandorin's reaction to it that made me chuckle out loud.
One comment that I will make is that whilst Murder on the Leviathan is billed as the second Fandorin mystery, there are a number of references in the story to Fandorin's adventures in Turkey, which I believe is a reference to the story of The Turkish Gambit and which, confusingly, is billed as the third book. I'm presuming therefore that the translation order is out of step with the story order, which is a little annoying although not fatal to enjoying the novel itself.
The Verdict:
Enjoyable and well-written I found this immensely better than The Winter Queen. Definitely worth a few hours of anyone's time.
On 15th March Lord Littleby, an English eccentric and collector, is found murdered in his Paris house together with nine members of his staff. A gold whale is found in the victim's hand - a badge owned only by first class ticket-holders on the maiden voyage of the Leviathan, the world's largest steamship.
Commissioner Gauche of the French police is called to solve the 'Crime of the Century' and narrows the syspects down to ten, who are forced to eat every meal together in the ship's Windsor Suite. Amongst these ten is the elegant young Erast Fandorin. Can he discover the murderer's identity before Gauche?
Having been unimpressed with Fandorin's debut in The Winter Queen, I was a little dubious about reading his second adventure, but I am pleased that I did as it's proved to be a very pleasant and entertaining read. Akunin tells the story from a number of perspectives - including Commissioner Gauche, a mysterious Japanese man called Aono, an English spinster called Clarissa Stamp, an English baronet called Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes and an attention-seeking pregnant woman called Renate Kleber. Whilst this could be distracting, Akunin does it well and the effect is to maintain the pace and the tension, particularly as the reader knows that any one of these narrators could in fact be the murderer ...
There are plenty of twists and turns to the plot (which I found to be reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile) but Akunin's real genius is in keeping Fandorin as a background character, someone to whom the narrators react to rather than someone who drives forward the plot (as was the case in The Winter Queen). As a result, I found Fandorin to be a much more likeable character than in the previous book - here he has a dry wit and his intelligence is allowed to show through without us being bashed on the head with it. In particular, there are a number of scenes revolving around a grotesque clock modelled on Big Ben's Tower and Fandorin's reaction to it that made me chuckle out loud.
One comment that I will make is that whilst Murder on the Leviathan is billed as the second Fandorin mystery, there are a number of references in the story to Fandorin's adventures in Turkey, which I believe is a reference to the story of The Turkish Gambit and which, confusingly, is billed as the third book. I'm presuming therefore that the translation order is out of step with the story order, which is a little annoying although not fatal to enjoying the novel itself.
The Verdict:
Enjoyable and well-written I found this immensely better than The Winter Queen. Definitely worth a few hours of anyone's time.
