Murder on the Leviathan; A Novel

New York: Random House, 2004. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. [8], 223, [7] pages. Ex-library with the usual library markings. Tipping his hat to Agatha Christie, Akunin assembles a colorful cast of suspects--including a secretive Japanese doctor, a professor who specialized in rare Indian artifacts, a pregnant Swiss woman, and an English aristocrat with an appetite for collecting Asian treasures--all of whom are confined together until the crime is solved. As the Leviathan steams toward Calcutta, will Fandorin be able to out-investigate Gauche and discover who the killer is, even as the ship's passengers are murdered, one by one? Boris Akunin's latest page-turner transports the reader back to the glamourous, dangerous past in a richly atmospheric tale of suspense on the high seas. Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili (born 20 May 1956), a Russian writer. He is best known as writer of detective and historical fiction. He is also an essayist and literary translator. Grigory Chkhartishvili has also written under pen names Anatoly Brusnikin, Anna Borisova, and Akunin-Chkhartishvili. Under his given name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, he serves as editor-in-chief of the 20-volume Anthology of Japanese Literature, chairman of the board of a large "Pushkin Library " and is the author of the book The Writer and Suicide. He has also contributed literary criticism and translations from Japanese, American and English literature under his own name. Since 1998 he has been writing fiction under the pseudonym "B. Akunin ". Decoding "B" as "Boris" appeared a few years later, when the writer began to be frequently interviewed. Murder on the Leviathan is the third novel in the Erast Fandorin historical detective series by Boris Akunin, although it was the second book in the series to be translated into English. Akunin conceived of the Fandorin series as a summary of all the genres of detective fiction, with each novel representing a different genre. Leviathan is his nod to Agatha Christie's style, with an exotic setting, a cast of unusual characters who each have secrets of their own, and a strange murder to start the action. The novel is set in 1878. The story opens with the murder in Paris of Lord Littleby, all seven of his servants and two children of servants. All were poisoned except for Littleby, who was bludgeoned with an ancient Indian artifact, a golden statuette of Shiva, which belonged to Lord Littleby and was stolen from his room, along with an old Indian shawl. French detective Gustave Gauche, in charge of the investigation, boards the passenger ship Leviathan. Gauche knows that the murderer must be one of the first-class passengers, because one of the special golden badges for the ship's first-class passengers was left in Littleby's room. Among the suspects are a Japanese Army officer, an addled English aristocrat, a married Swiss woman, and a clever young Russian diplomat on his way to his new post in Japan. The diplomat is Erast Fandorin, the master detective, who shoots down each of the ineffectual Gauche's incorrect conclusions, and in the end takes it on himself to find the murderer. Leviathan was nominated for Best European Crime Novel in the Gumshoe Awards 2005. The novel was adapted for the BBC's Saturday Play. The original broadcast was on 3 December 2005. Derived from a Kirkus review: This exemplary retro period puzzler, a Russian bestseller, pits two detectives against each other in a race to pick the murderer from a table of first-class passengers aboard a British steamship's maiden voyage. Two weeks before the 1878 sailing, that well-known collector Lord Littleby had been beaten to death in his Paris home by a ruthless killer who left no fewer than nine guards, servants, and children of the household dead on the floor below before making off with a golden statuette of Shiva. A clue clutched in Littleby's hand leads Commissioner Gustave Gauche to book passage on the Leviathan, en route to the mysterious East. On board, he swiftly narrows the list of primary suspects to four. Each of them—a troubled baronet, an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army, the pregnant wife of a Swiss banker, and a faded English spinster—is given alternate chapters in which to watch and describe the others, and the results can stand with the most ingenious Golden Age stories, as Papa Gauche and Russian diplomat Erast P. Fandorin match wits to unmask the killer and explode each other's theories, as they do repeatedly over a mounting body count of avid dilettantes. The imperial/aristocratic milieu pays homage to Agatha Christie, the fiendishly clever Chinese-box plotting to Ellery Queen. Akunin's most distinctive contribution is a tone of dryly amused irony that continues to the last line.