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Murder on the Leviathan is the Fandorin novel where Boris Akunin takes the locked-room mystery seriously and writes a small structural marvel. Most of the book is told from the points of view of various passengers aboard the steamer Leviathan, bound from Southampton to Calcutta in 1878, while a French inspector named Gauche tries to identify which of a small group of first-class travelers murdered ten people in a Paris mansion.
Fandorin is on board too, more or less in cameo until the final third, which is part of the joke. Akunin is paying explicit homage to the country-house mystery (and to Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile in particular), and the rotating-narrator structure lets him play with reader trust in ways the form usually does not. The reveal is fair and satisfying. The atmosphere on the ship, from the gilded saloon to the boiler-room visit, is rendered with real economy.
Four stars. Not the strongest entry in the series, but a very fun one, and it shows Akunin's structural range. Read after The Winter Queen.
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