Promotional Information

Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series is growing in sales with each new book. The first in the series, The Winter Queen has sold over 50,000 in paperback and Murder on the Leviathan has already equalled those figures This series has the enormous potential of the Number One Ladies Detective agency books of Alexander McCall Smith 'A tale of derring-do, full of sieges, ambushes and cavalry charges' TLS 'What Akunin's books have in common is charm, elegant writing, abundant wit - and Erast Fandorin...He is a delightful character like no other in crime fiction' The Times 'Probably the best so far...sheer swashbuckling frenzy, perhaps in the style of George MacDonald Fraser...great fun' Time Out 'This is the 19th century evoked in all its absurdity, but also in the knowledge that it is a fragile world whose inflexible certainties will soon be shattered' Sunday Times

About the Author

Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili. He translated Japanese texts before the worldwide success of his Fandorin series. He lives in Moscow.

Reviews

'[Farndorin is] surely the most engagingly diffident detective since Sherlock Holmes. The descriptive details is wonderful, too, bringing to life a range if military types who would not be out of place in War and Peace.' -- Christina Koning TIMES (1.10.05) 'an exciting gallop through 19th-century Europe complete with parodic characters and outrageous moustaches. Derring is done and buckles swashed, while at the book's heart lies a melancholic and believable detective - and it works. Fandorin is a fascinating character and this is an excellent read.' TELEGRAPH (15.10.05) 'great entertainment.' OBSERVER 'Boris Akunin's famous detective,Erast Fandorin, combines the elegance of Lord Peter Wimsey, the sangfroid of James Bond and the uncanny intellect of Sherlock Holmes.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (20.11.05) 'Turkish Gambit is an excellent historical pastiche...Akunin sets and maintains a cracking pace, and the result - intricately plotted, full of chicanery, and genuinely funny - is hugely entertaining.' -- Laura Wilson GUARDIAN (3.12.05)

If chatty digressions on love and war tend to slow the third Erast Fandorin historical to appear in the U.S. (after 2004's Murder on the Leviathan), Russian author Akunin does a superb job of rendering the immediacy of battle in the 1877-1878 conflict between the Motherland and Turkey, and illuminating the politics behind czarist fantasies of recapturing Constantinople. At the Balkan front, the quiet, stuttering Fandorin befriends Varya Suvorova, a midwife turned telegraphist. Varya is bent on visiting her court-martialed fiance, who's accused of being a spy. Fandorin and Varya are soon caught up in the fortunes of the Russian army, which a well-placed mole seems intent on betraying. Suspicions point to various Russian staff officers and to some glamorous foreign correspondents, including Seamus McLaughlin from London's Daily Post and Michel Paladin from the Revue Parisienne. Codes, courtesans and love letters all come into play, as well as murder and suicide in combat, in a plot more complex than some West Point battle plans. While the plethora of minor characters can be confusing, the quirky Fandorin and determined Varya stand out amid the turmoil of their surroundings. Agent, Linda Michaels Ltd. (Mar. 15) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.