false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184257004m/1495479.jpg 64552 27 Usually, crime writers who give birth to protagonists deserving of future series want to feature those characters as prominently as possible in subsequent installments. Not so Boris Akunin, who succeeds his celebrated first novel about daring 19th-century Russian sleuth Erast Fandorin, <I>The Winter Queen</I>, with the less inventive <I>Murder on the Leviathan</I>, in which the now former Moscow investigator competes for center stage with a swell-headed French police commissioner, a crafty adventuress boasting more than her fair share of aliases, and a luxurious steamship that appears fated for deliberate destruction in the Indian Ocean.<p> Following the 1878 murders of British aristocrat Lord Littleby and his servants on Paris's fashionable Rue de Grenelle, Gustave Gauche, "Investigator for Especially Important Crimes," boards the double-engined, six-masted <I>Leviathan</I> on its maiden voyage from England to India. He's on the lookout for first-class passengers missing their specially made gold whale badges--one of which Littleby had yanked from his attacker before he died. However, this trap fails: several travelers are badgeless, and still others make equally good candidates for Littleby's slayer, including a demented baronet, a dubious Japanese army officer, a pregnant and loquacious Swiss banker's wife, and a suave Russian diplomat headed for Japan. That last is of course Fandorin, still recovering two years later from the events related in <I>The Winter Queen</I>. Like a lesser Hercule Poirot, "papa" Gauche grills these suspects, all of whom harbor secrets, and occasionally lays blame for Paris's "crime of the century" before one or another of them--only to have the hyper-perceptive Fandorin deflate his arguments. It takes many leagues of ocean, several more deaths, and a superfluity of overlong recollections by the shipmates before a solution to this twisted case emerges from the facts of Littleby's killing and the concurrent theft of a valuable Indian artifact from his mansion.<p> Like the best Golden Age nautical mysteries, <I>Murder on the Leviathan</I> finds its drama in the escalating tensions between a small circle of too-tight-quartered passengers, and draws its humor from their over-mannered behavior and individual eccentricities. Trouble is, Akunin (the pseudonym of Russian philologist Grigory Chkhartishvili) doesn't exceed expectations of what can be done within those traditions. <I>--J. Kingston Pierce</I> 513625 2001 Murder on the Leviathan: A Novel total:418|5:95|4:181|3:121|2:17|1:4| 418 1600 520 43 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 1 false Mon Jan 28 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 28 18:14:26 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 28 18:50:43 -0800 2008 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Wed Jul 29 06:47:33 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 06 20:34:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Tue Sep 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 11:13:32 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 11:20:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Tue Feb 12 08:55:02 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 25 18:33:03 -0800 2008 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Wed Nov 18 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 16 12:11:51 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 23 11:39:11 -0800 2009 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Wed Jul 25 06:52:24 -0700 2007 Fri Feb 27 23:26:18 -0800 2009 The Winter Queen and The Turkish Gambit from Erast Fandorin series. Boris Akunin showed 19th century Russia and Europe. It's 1878. Paris is shaken by unusual and cruel crime of the century - unknown murderer killed collectioner of antics from India, nine of his servants (seven serva...more...]]> 1038683 0753818434 9780753818435 28 6 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180422752m/1038683.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1038683.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 2 0 false Thu Aug 13 03:33:36 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 14 07:33:14 -0700 2009 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Thu Nov 27 07:03:46 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 06 20:44:26 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Tue May 27 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 27 00:20:10 -0700 2008 Tue May 27 03:18:23 -0700 2008 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Sun Jan 18 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 07 12:26:13 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 18 19:21:26 -0800 2009 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Sun Aug 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 09:23:59 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 09:25:28 -0700 2009
I liked this better than The Winter Queen. It's a kind of Agatha Christie pastiche, with echoes of And Then There Were Ten or Murder on the Orient Express. ]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Nov 13 02:26:06 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 13 02:26:06 -0800 2009 A bit like Holmes where things aren't always revealed to the reader so you can't necessarily solve the crime yourself.
]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 5 0 false Sun Jun 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 11:56:59 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 12:00:36 -0700 2009
Akunin's young Russian detective/diplomat protagonist, Erast Fandorin, could well become a favorite sleuth for mystery readers ]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Tue Mar 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 06:51:21 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 06:52:53 -0800 2009 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 2 0 false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 16:25:20 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 17:53:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 5 0 false Sun Sep 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 21 18:31:30 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 27 11:07:24 -0700 2009 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 0 0 false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 14 16:35:22 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 14 16:37:58 -0800 2008
Thanks to the recommendation of a friend, I was impelled to take anothe...more...]]> 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Thu Jan 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Apr 23 04:29:08 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 04:30:07 -0700 2009 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 3 0 false Mon Aug 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 08:15:39 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 07:38:40 -0700 2009 64552 0812968794 9780812968798 355 35 3.83 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170623367m/64552.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64552.Murder_on_the_Leviathan 4 0 false Mon Oct 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 06:10:48 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 13:37:52 -0700 2009 ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1495479