Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

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### Amazon.com Review
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, __, with the less inventive *Murder on the Leviathan*, 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.
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 *Leviathan* 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 *The Winter Queen*. 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.
Like the best Golden Age nautical mysteries, *Murder on the Leviathan* 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. *--J. Kingston Pierce*
### From Publishers Weekly
Akunin writes like a hybrid of Caleb Carr, Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Peters in his second mystery to be published in the U.S., set on the maiden voyage of the British luxury ship *Leviathan*, en route to India in the spring of 1878. Akunin's young Russian detective/diplomat protagonist, Erast Fandorin, has matured considerably since his debut in last year's highly praised *The Winter Queen*, set in 1876, and proves a worthy foil to French police commissioner Gustave Gauche, who boards the *Leviathan* because a clue suggests that one of the passengers murdered a wealthy British aristocrat, seven servants and two children in his Paris home and stole priceless Indian treasures. The intuitive, methodical Fandorin, who joins the ship at Port Said, soon slyly takes over the investigation and comes up with an eclectic group of suspects, all with secrets to hide, whom Gauche assigns to the same dining room. The company recite humorous or instructive stories that slow down the action but eventually relate to the identification of the killer. Gauche offers at least four solutions to the crimes, but in each case Fandorin debates or debunks his reasoning. The atmospheric historical detail gives depth to the twisting plot, while the ruthless yet poignant arch villain makes up for a cast of mostly cardboard characters. Readers disappointed by the lack of background on Fandorin will find plenty in *The Winter Queen*.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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And just at that very moment, of course, someone started hammering on the door. She heard Milford-Stokes’s agitated voice in the corridor:

‘Mr Fandorin, sir! Are you awake? Open up! Quickly! This is a conspiracy!’

‘Stay here,’ Erast whispered. ‘I shall be back soon.’

He went out into the corridor. Clarissa heard muffled voices, but she could not make out what they were saying. Five minutes later Fandorin came back in. He took some small, heavy object out of a drawer and put it in his pocket, then he picked up his elegant cane and said in an anxious voice:

‘Wait here for a while and then go back to your cabin. Things seem to be coming to a head.’

She knew now what he had meant by that … Later, when she was back in her cabin, Clarissa had heard footsteps clattering along the corridor and the sound of excited voices, but of course it had never even entered her head that death was hovering above the masts of the proud Leviathan.

‘What is it that Mme Kleber wants to confess?’ Dr Truffo asked nervously. ‘M. Fandorin, please tell us what is going on. How can she be involved in all this?’

But Fandorin just put on an even gloomier expression and said nothing.

Rolling in time to the regular impact of the waves, Leviathan was sailing northwards full steam ahead, carving through the waters of the Palk Strait, which were still murky after the storm.

The coastline of Ceylon was a green stripe on the distant horizon.

The morning was overcast and close. From time to time a gust of hot air blew a whiff of decay in through the open windows on the windward side of the salon, but the draught could find no exit and it foundered helplessly, hardly even ruffling the curtains.

‘I think I have made a mistake,’ Erast muttered, taking a step towards the door. I’m always one step or half a step behind …’

When the first shot came, Clarissa did not immediately realize what the sound was - it was just a sharp crack, and any number of things could go crack on a ship sailing across a rough sea. But then there was another.

‘Those are revolver shots!’ exclaimed Sir Reginald. ‘But where from?’

‘The commissioner’s cabin!’ Fandorin snapped, dashing for the door.

Everybody rushed after him.

There was a third shot, and then, when they were only about 20 steps away from Gauche’s cabin, a fourth.

‘Stay here!’ Fandorin shouted without turning round, pulling a small revolver out of his back pocket.

The others slowed down, but Clarissa was not afraid, she was determined to stay by Erast’s side.

He pushed open the door of the cabin and held the revolver out in front of him. Clarissa stood on tiptoes and peeped over his shoulder.

The first thing she saw was an overturned chair. Then she saw Commissioner Gauche. He was lying on his back on the other side of the polished table that stood in the centre of the room. Clarissa craned her neck to get a better look at him and shuddered: Gauche’s face was hideously contorted and there was dark blood bubbling out of the centre of his forehead and dribbling onto the floor in two narrow rivulets.

Renate Kleber was in the opposite corner, huddled against the wall. She was sobbing hysterically and her teeth were chattering.

There was a large black revolver with a smoking barrel in her trembling hand.

‘Aaa! Ooo!’ howled Mme Kleber, pointing to the dead body.

‘I … I killed him!’

‘I had guessed,’ Fandorin said coolly.

Keeping his revolver trained on the Swiss woman, he went up to her and deftly snatched the gun out of’her hand. She made no attempt to resist.

‘Dr Truffo!’ Erast called, following Renate’s every move closely. ‘Come here!’

The diminutive doctor glanced into the gunsmoke-filled cabin with timid curiosity.

‘Examine the body, please,’ said Fandorin.

Muttering some lamentation to himself in Italian, Truffo knelt beside the dead Gauche.

‘A fatal wound to the head,’ he reported. ‘Death was instantaneous.

But that’s not all … There is a gunshot wound to the right elbow. And one here, to the left wrist. Three wounds in all’

‘Keep looking. There were four shots.’

‘There aren’t any more. One of the bullets must have missed.

No, wait! Here it is, in the right knee!’

I’ll tell you everything,’ Renate babbled, shuddering and sobbing.

‘Only take me out of this awful room!’

Fandorin put the little revolver in his pocket and the big one on the table.

‘Very well, let’s go. Doctor, inform the head of the watch what has happened here and have him put a guard on this door.

And then rejoin us. There is no one apart from us now to conduct the investigation.’

‘What an ill-starred voyage!’ Truffo gasped as he walked along the corridor. ‘Poor Leviathanl’

In the Windsor saloon Mme Kleber sat at the table, facing the door, and everyone else sat facing her. Fandorin was the only one who took a chair beside the murderess.

‘Gentlemen, do not look at me like that,’ Mme Kleber said in a pitiful voice. ‘I killed him, but I am the innocent victim. When I tell you what happened, you will see … But for God’s sake, give me some water.’

The solicitous Japanese poured her some lemonade - the table had not yet been cleared after breakfast.

‘So what did happen?’ asked Clarissa.

‘Translate everything she says,’ Mrs Truffo sternly instructed her husband, who had already returned. ‘Everything, word for word.’

The doctor nodded, wiping the perspiration induced by fast walking from his forehead with a handkerchief.

‘Don’t be afraid, madam. Just tell the truth,’ Sir Reginald encouraged Renate. ‘This person is no gentleman, he has no idea how to treat a lady, but I guarantee that you will be treated with respect.’

These words were accompanied by a glance in Fandorin’s direction - a glance filled with such fierce hatred that Clarissa Stamp was startled. What on earth could have happened between Erast and Milford-Stokes since the previous day to cause this hostility?

‘Thank you, dear Reginald,’ Renate sobbed.

She drank her lemonade slowly, snuffling and whining under her breath. Then she looked imploringly at her interrogators and began:

‘Gauche is no guardian of the law! He is a criminal, a madman! That loathsome shawl has driven everybody insane!

Even a police commissioner!’

‘You said you had something to confess to him,’ Clarissa reminded her in an unfriendly tone of voice. ‘What was it?’

‘Yes, there was something that I was hiding … Something important. I was going to confess to everything, but first I wanted to expose the commissioner!’

‘Expose him? As what?’ Sir Reginald asked sympathetically.

Mme Kleber stopped crying and solemnly declared:

‘A murderer. Renier did not kill himself. Commissioner Gauche killed him!’ Seeing how astounded her listeners were by this claim, she continued rapidly. ‘It’s obvious! You try smashing your skull by running at the wall in a room of only six square metres. It can’t be done. If Charles had decided to kill himself, he would have taken off his tie, tied it to the ventilation grille and jumped off a chair. No, Gauche killed him! He struck him on the head with some heavy object and then made it look like suicide by smashing the dead man’s head against the wall.’

‘But why would the commissioner want to kill Renier?’ Clarissa asked with a sceptical shake of her head. Mme Kleber was obviously talking nonsense.

‘I told you, greed had driven him completely insane. That shawl is to blame for everything. Either Gauche was angry with Charles for burning the shawl, or he didn’t believe him - I don’t know which. But anyway it’s quite clear that Gauche killed him.

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