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Loading... Murder on the Leviathan / Leviathanby Boris Akunin
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. AdonisGuilfoyle | Jul 2, 2009 |  1   3rd in the Erast Fandorin series. This is a lightweight series that I hope Akunin is having as much fun writing as he appears to be doing. This installment, according to the cover blurbs, is a takeoff on Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Certainly, it’s very different in style from the first two. Told from the points of view of different passengers of the mammoth luxury liner Leviathan, on her maiden cruise in 1878, the plot involves a horrendous murder of 12 people in Paris before the sailing and the puzzling theft of Indian artifacts from the collection of an eccentric (is there any ohter kind) English lord. 10 people, including a gruff old Inspector of Police from Paris and Fandorin himself, are in more or less enforced company as members of a particular dining group. One of them is the murderer. What is so wonderful about the story is that each of the passengers is a stock figure out of 19th century fiction of this type--an insane member of the English nobility (Akunin seems to really get off on portraying the English aristocracy in this fashion), a Japanese samurai, an English spinster, a young pregnant Swiss, the Inspector whose name is Gauche (can you believe it?), and others. Akunin does a brilliant job of both spoof and characterization, and handles the multiple points of view masterfully. Faithfully keeping to the Christie style (as I understand it), no one is who he or she seems to be, and the plot twists and turns according to revelations about each of the passengers. Fandorin is a great Holmes takeoff. More than anything else, I was reminded of The Pink Panther and the bumbling inspector whose name I can not now remember. It’s that order of comedy/crime. And it’s that much fun. Highly recommended. (  )Joycepa | May 14, 2009 | 1 This is the second book in the Erast Fandorin series that starts with The Winter Queen which I reviewed last month. This is the story of a mass murder and theft of Indian antiquities in France and the murderer's attempted escape on an England-to-India steamliner, the Leviathan. Fandorin is a passenger on the boat en route to his new diplomatic post in Japan -- after the tragedy that ended the last book. A French police commissioner by the name of Gauche takes passage on the boat and has all of his suspects assigned to one meal salon, including Fandorin. Fandorin is quickly discounted but the others are all under various states of suspicion as the reason for their presence in the salon is revealed and multiple murders follow. This book is something of an homage to other mystery writers including Agatha Christie, Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle. Wilkie Collins was the first author to write a single novel in multiple voices. This book also tells the story from multiple viewpoints, although oddly never Fandorin's view. Akunin also writes a scene where Fandorin uses his powers of deduction to identify other passengers on the ship in a very Sherlock Holmes-esque way. Murder on the Leviathan is a fantastic book and is highly different from the first book in the series. Akunin is very good at writing in different styles and different voices. If you want to read one book in the series, this is a probably the best and a good stand-alone story. http://webereading.com/2008/09/at-por... (  )klpm | Feb 11, 2009 | 1 As a young mystery reader, my dad recommended this new series to me because he said that I would like the many characters implicated by the story. The mystery is about the murder of Lord Littleby, a collector of museum pieces. He and 9 of his servants were killed. The killer leaves a gold badge to board the steamship Leviathan. Detector Gauche deduces that one of the first class passengers will be missing the badge, and therefore will be the killer. So, he boards this ship with an assistant and enters an epic passage with some interesting suspects. Akunin definitely strives to make the mystery the stereotypical murder mystery by introducing 11 suspects. As the story clearly unfolded I was being sent little hints by Akunin as more information about the suspects was dispensed. The structure was very typical however; a clumsy,old detective (Gauche), 11 varying people in age, nationality, wealth, and the young detective to save the day (Erast Fandorin). The introduction of Fandorin late in the story made it possible for each character to really develop, and take the focus off this main protagonist with a very small role. I liked this book because it maintained that classic murder mystery, but added the development of so many characters that it was still very fresh. jboxer7 | Nov 1, 2008 | the russan version of agatha christie - great! (  )izzynomad | Aug 1, 2008 | 0.113 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0753818434, Paperback)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, The Winter Queen, 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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:04 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Following on from the shocking epilogue in 'The Winter Queen', the Russian detective is much changed, from the grey in his hair to the stammer in his speech. Suspicion falls on him as he is corralled into a murder investigation that has taken to the seas. French inspector Gauche (wonderful names abound) has narrowed down his list of suspects to a group of passengers travelling aboard the maiden voyage of the proto-Titantic liner 'Leviathan' to India, and means to find out exactly who killed a rich Englishman and his staff in Paris. The mystery was thoroughly twisted and almost impossible, though the real joy of these stories is not solving the puzzle, but watching Fandorin at work (the true mark of a good detective series). The cast of suspects includes a French femme fatale, a Japanese doctor, an English old maid (who throws herself at Fandorin!), and a batty baronet. All were sketched well, but none really came to life - including Fandorin, who is viewed by the other characters throughout.
The comedy and skill of the writing more than sustained this short mystery, however - the era evinced is more roaring twenties than late nineteenth century, but bar a couple of anachronisms ('claustrophobia' and 'psychopath'), the dialogue worked with the historical setting of the series. (And Fandorin precedes the baronet's name with his title when introducing him, when he should have used 'Sir', but that could be in the translation or just a nitpick!)
A fun read, and I can't wait to read more of the series! (