The Turkish Gambit (Erast Fandorin Mysteries)

Reading Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist reminded me of another surreal detective novel set in the 1800's that I enjoyed (The Winter Queen, by Boris Akunin.) It struck me that I never got around to reading its sequel, The Turkish Gambit. Here Akunin keeps the first book's distinctly Russian tone (romantic, melancholy, cynically fatalist), dials down the weirdness,...more

Reading Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist reminded me of another surreal detective novel set in the 1800's that I enjoyed (The Winter Queen, by Boris Akunin.) It struck me that I never got around to reading its sequel, The Turkish Gambit. Here Akunin keeps the first book's distinctly Russian tone (romantic, melancholy, cynically fatalist), dials down the weirdness, and makes his hero Erast Fandorin (who was an endearingly flawed wuss in the Winter Queen) a little more badass. I didn't enjoy the Turkish Gambit as much because its straightforward "guess the traitor" mystery simply isn't as interesting. (And some readers may be bored by the characters' musings on love, war, and politics that sidetrack the action, even though I liked them.) But the book has other charms: Akunin gives us another endearingly flawed character in the vain, pretentious Varya Suvorova (whose eyes we see most of the action through) and proves that he can ably tackle a historical fiction/war yarn. (The setting is the Siege of Plevna, Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War, which delighted my inner geek.)   hide