Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Erast Fandorin, Boris Akunin's impossibly competent 19th century Russian detective, has spent the early books in the series working through a deliberate genre tour. Special Assignments collects two novellas in two different modes: a comic con-man caper and a darker Ripper-style stalker case, both set in 1880s and 1890s Moscow.
Akunin treats each form with the kind of formal precision that you only get from a writer in love with the conventions. The con-man story is structured as a series of escalating swindles. The serial-killer novella draws explicitly from the Whitechapel investigations and reads, in places, like Akunin is showing the receipts.
The trick of the Fandorin books is that the pastiche is so studied it feels original. The translation by Andrew Bromfield is excellent. Four stars, and a recommendation that you read the series roughly in order to get the full effect of the gear shifts.
Related reads
If you liked Special Assignments
The Winter Queen
by Boris Akunin
The first Erast Fandorin novel. A young clerk in 1876 Moscow investigates an apparent suicide and falls down a labyrinth.
Murder on the Leviathan
by Boris Akunin
Akunin doing locked-room mystery on a Suez-bound steamer in 1878. Multiple narrators, a French detective, and Fandorin in supporting position.
The Turkish Gambit
by Boris Akunin
Fandorin on the Russo-Turkish War. War-correspondent mystery with deep affection for Tolstoy.
The Death of Achilles
by Boris Akunin
The fourth Fandorin novel. Boris Akunin doing the political thriller, with a wonderful villain and the most action-heavy of the early entries.
Pelagia and the Black Monk
by Boris Akunin
The second Sister Pelagia mystery. A ghost on a Volga island, an Athanasian monastery, and Akunin in full Dostoyevsky mode.
Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog
by Boris Akunin
A nun-detective in 19th century Russia investigating a poisoned dog. Funnier and warmer than that summary suggests.
More by this author