Book details

Book description

Erast Fandorin returns to Moscow after an absence of six years, only to find himself instantly embroiled in court politics and scandal. His old friend General Sobolev - the famous 'Russian Achilles' - has been found dead in a hotel room, and Fandorin suspects foul play. Using his now-famous powers of detection - powers that belie his twenty-six years - Fandorin embarks on an investigation, during which the political and the personal may become dangerously blurred. With the assistance of some formidable martial arts skills, acquired whilst Fandorin was in Japan, our eccentric and ingenious hero must endeavour to discover not so much whodunit, as why... Akunin is an outstanding novelist... Fandorin is a beautifully drawn character who more than lives up to comparisons with Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes... The characters are delightful and you can imagine them in a Woody Allen version of an Agatha Christie novel... Akunin's work is gloriously tongue-in-cheek but seriously edge-of-your-seat at the same time' Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili. He has been compared to Gogol, Tolstoy and Arthur Conan Doyle, and his Erast Fandorin books have sold over ten million copies in Russia alone. He lives in Moscow.