Cossack silliness

Last night I couldn't go to sleep until I'd read EVERY SINGLE WORD of Boris Akunin's Death of Achilles. It was a such a ripping yarn I couldn't bear to stop until I found out what happened next and then the thing after that and after that until it was all gone. Now I've got to find another book. Sigh.

Apparently Boris Akunin is NOT HIS REAL NAME. I guess if I was called Grigory Chkhartishvillihas I might find a more euphonic non de plume too.

Death of Achilles is the fourth the series of novels about an unconventionally talented Erast somethingovich Fandorin who combines the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes with the martial arts ability of Jackie Chan in late nineteenth century Russia. In this adventure, he comes up against a similarly talented nemesis. The second half of the book is told from the baddie's perspective and makes him seem, if not attractive, then at least very charasmatic and more understandable. There is one badly dangling loose end that meant I DIDN'T sleep very well at all last night but apart from that it was great fun if you can keep track of all the triple barrelled Russian names.

And I've since found out that there are 11 of these books altogether but only four have been translated so far. The first book in another series about Sister Pelagia was also published recently.

If there's a serious subtext to these books I haven't found it yet. I'm sure If they'd been written before Glasnost rather than the mid 1990s, we'd be expected to find counter-revolutionary idealism of pre-soviet Russia. I guess in that case Mr Chkhartishvillihas would have been sent straight to a gulag rather than being Russia's bestselling and most beloved writer (I'm sure I read that somewhere but can't find the link).