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The Winter Queen is Boris Akunin's first Fandorin novel, originally Azazel in Russian, and it is the kind of debut that feels both fully formed and slightly miraculous. Erast Petrovich Fandorin is a clerk in the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department in 1876, naive and well-bred and stuck behind a desk. A young aristocrat shoots himself in a public square, the suicide does not add up, and Fandorin starts asking questions that nobody wants asked.
What follows is a tour through Akunin's favorite pastime, which is paying loving homage to a different 19th century genre with every book. The Winter Queen plays as a kind of Dostoyevskian detection with strong Wilkie Collins overtones, and the conspiracy at its center expands in ways that recall Dumas more than Conan Doyle. Akunin earns every gear shift.
Fandorin himself is a wonderful protagonist precisely because he is not yet competent. He stutters. He blushes. He survives by luck and persistence and an absolute refusal to stop pulling threads. The ending is heartbreaking in a way the cover copy will not warn you about.
Five stars. If you have not read Akunin, start here. The series gets stranger and more inventive but the foundation is in this one.
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The Death of Achilles
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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
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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
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A nun-detective in 19th century Russia investigating a poisoned dog. Funnier and warmer than that summary suggests.
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