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This is the first book featuring Erast Fandorin, the famous gentleman sleuth.
Moscow 1876. A young law student commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow’s Alexander Gardens. But this is no ordinary death, for the young man was the son of an influential industrialist and has left a considerable fortune.
Erast Fandorin, a hotheaded new recruit to the Criminal Investigation Department, is assigned to the case. Brilliant, young, and sophisticated, Fandorin embarks on an investigation that will take him from the palatial mansions of Moscow to the seedy backstreets of London in his hunt for the conspirators behind this mysterious death.
Read by William Hootkins
(p) 2004 Orion Publishing Group
Moscow 1876. A young law student commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow’s Alexander Gardens. But this is no ordinary death, for the young man was the son of an influential industrialist and has left a considerable fortune.
Erast Fandorin, a hotheaded new recruit to the Criminal Investigation Department, is assigned to the case. Brilliant, young, and sophisticated, Fandorin embarks on an investigation that will take him from the palatial mansions of Moscow to the seedy backstreets of London in his hunt for the conspirators behind this mysterious death.
Read by William Hootkins
(p) 2004 Orion Publishing Group
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Reviews
He's [Fandorin] ... an engaging personality - conscientious, honourable, and pleasingly naive. Hence one feels the instant appeal of this gentle mystery, and appreciates the extraordinary Russian success of Boris Akunin ... It's a parable about the death of hope and innocence, as well as an effectively concocted story
Boris Akunin has written a series of novels set in Tsarist Russia in the 1970s and featuring Erast Fandorin, a naive young police investigator ... the story propels the idealistic Fandorin into the company of enigmatic and beautiful women, devious conspirators and a most unlikely Svengali intent on world domination ... This may not be what we expect from Russian fiction, but it's all very fast-moving and enjoyable
... a sparkling romp of a story... [with a] witty and beautifully constructed plot ... The Winter Queen has echoes of the plots of the nineteenth-century classics all Russians know: duels, reckless gambling, superfluous men and mysterious beauties whose salons are full of despairing admirers
The mixture of the grisly and the lighthearted is characteristic of Boris Akunin, who in Russia is roughly the counterpart of John Grisham ... The Winter Queen is as delicate and elegant as a Fabergé egg
