The Turkish Gambit

by Boris Akunin

Translated by Andrew Bromfield

In 1877, war wages between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Diplomat and police agent Fandorin is recruited to find the identity of and capture the mysterious Anwar, a Turkish spy who is intervening with the course of war in the middle of the operations. A young, headstrong and beautiful woman, Varya, whose fiancé is arrested for espionage himself, is pressed upon him as an unwilling assistant. She is pressed on all sides by gallant generals, war heroes, a dashing French reporter, and obsequious lieutenants.

Fandorin himself is mostly absent – he leaves for England and solves the case off-page, returning to arrest the culprit and explain his deductions. The main character this time around is Varya, who falls for Erast despite her modern sensibilities, and serves as a stand-in for the reader, a newcomer and mostly confused about all the goings-on. Despite Fandorin's demotion to co-headliner, this remains an excellent entry to the series. Full of exciting, larger than life characters and suspense on a grand scale, it’s a fun swashbuckling spy story a la Flashman. 

four stars 

Murder On the Leviathan

by Boris Akunin

translated by Andrew Bromfield

After a British antiquarian and his entire household are murdered in cold blood and a golden statue stolen, French police commissioner Gauche deduces that the murderer must be on the steamship Leviathan, leaving for Calcutta on its maiden voyage. An odd cast of characters fall into his net of suspicion – among them an Italian doctor, a mad British aristocrat, a Japanese man claiming to be a military man, a pregnant woman, a professor and expert on antiquities, and diplomat Erast Fandorin. Soon, though, the latter has joined forced with the Frenchman, and as secrets are uncovered and the truth becomes clearer, more bodies start hitting the deck. This is a totally delightful homage to the Agathie Christie style of whodunit. Extremely witty, erudite, full of twists and red herrings, beautifully paced. A real page-turner. 

five stars 

The Winter Queen

by Boris Akunin

translated by Andrew Bromfield

In Moscow, 1876, a rash of student suicides prompts young collegiate registrar Erast Fandorin to investigate, more or less on his own initiative. He quickly finds that they are linked to a mysterious femme fatale, who in turn leads him to an even more mysterious conspiratorial organization (nihilists? Revolutionaries?) known as Azazel. Through persistence and a good bit of luck, he manages to find, to his horror, just how far-reaching this organization is.

I loved reading this book. A sort of turn of the century James Bond as written by a Russian John Grisham, it’s decidedly light in tone, with moments of great humor. Yes, it’s all rather easy to predict, but Akunin makes it all unfold with a deft touch. The end is a jarringly grim bit, but only ensured that I wanted to know what Fandorin would do next. 

four stars 

Full Dark House

by Christopher Fowler

Arthur Bryant and John May, two young police detectives, meet during the Blitz of London when May joins the Peculiar Crimes Unit.  Bryant’s unusual methods (contacting mediums, thinking largely in symbolism) and his unsettling social skills rankle May, but soon their personalities and strategies mesh.  They investigate a string of gruesome, perhaps symbolic, murders at the Palace Theatre, during a scandalous production of Offenbach’s “Orpheus In the Underworld.”  Meanwhile, in present-day London, an explosion at the unit takes the now elderly Bryant’s life, and May traces his old partner’s footsteps, trying to find out who killed him, and how in connects to their first case.

It’s a beguiling setup, very richly atmospheric, especially the 1940 scenes, which are clearly researched to the tiniest detail (brands of cigarettes, how women wore their hair, and so on).  While I took the “big twist” at the end pretty much for granted throughout the book (what, the main character isn’t really dead?), other twists and turns were highly enjoyable.  All the little hints and witty touches come together: Fowler plays fair with the reader, but this is much more a moody thriller than a whodunit, though it succeeds at both.  

four stars

A Time To Kill

by John Grisham
1989

Two rednecks abduct, torture and rape a ten year old black girl in a small Mississippi town.  At their arraignment, the girl’s father blows them away with an M-16.  He is taken into custody, and Jake Brigance, a young white solo practitioner who has some experience with defending poor blacks, comes to his defense.  So begins a nightmare for Brigance and those around him, as the town is split in two, the Klan makes violent attempts on his life, the judicial system is stacked against him, and defeat looms as the trial’s end approaches.

It’s a very compelling first novel, better-written than his second, the unimpressive The Firm, and with all the thrills that The Summons lacked.  Grisham delves into every seedy detail of the judicial system of Ford County, Mississippi, how politics and biased judges and money and votes and favors play a part in every step of the process.  He introduces fully fleshed-out characters, with unsympathetic streaks in his hero and amusing backstories for the supporting cast.  The end was a bit abrupt and shallow (just imagine the girl was white? That’s all it takes to dispel entrenched prejudices and bad feelings?), and left me feeling that a lot of ends were left way too loose (so, I guess the death threats never came to anything after the black guy was acquitted, they all lived happily ever after, the end) – but in all it was an admirable page-turner, richly evocative of the American south.

three stars

Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol
1842
translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volohonsky

A likeable middle aged petty official, Chichikov, comes to the village of N. and starts buying up dead muzhiks from various landowners.  The idea is to transfer ownership of the titular dead souls (in the sense of persons, not actual souls) to Chichikov while they’re still listed as living for tax purposes, until the end of the year.  Then Chichikov will own these serfs, on paper, and presumably be able to use them as property to stake out a loan and become a large landowner himself.

It’s a remarkably funny book; the landowners are sharp parodies, marked by greed or ignorance or self-inflation.  Because of the townsfolk’s tendency to gossip and worship the veneer of respectability and wealth, Chichikov is treated like a prince amongst the petty officials, and a celebration is thrown in his honor. Very suddenly however, rumors flare up that the serfs he bought are all dead, and that he was planning on eloping with the Governor's daughter. In the confusion that ensues, the backwardness of the irrational, gossip-hungry townspeople is most delicately conveyed. Absurd suggestions come to light, such as the possibility that Chichikov is Napoleon in disguise or the notorious and retired 'Captain Kopeikin,' who had lost an arm and a leg during a war. The now disgraced traveler is immediately ostracized from the company he had been enjoying and has no choice but to flee the town in disgrace.  There is a second book, but much truncated, unfinished, and not nearly as funny as the first.  This edition is fine for Gogol scholars, but for those who just wish to enjoy this “poem novel” should stop at the first book.

four stars

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

by Jim Collins

I decided to read the main book after I admired the ideas in Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great.  I don’t need to go into the points I adumbrated with that addendum to this book, but I found a few new concepts that hit home.

One, in discussing Level 5 leadership, Collins emphasizes a humble figure: one that needs the brutal truth, doesn’t rely on charisma, looks toward the future of the company and not his own, attributes success to good luck, and so on.  This is a concept that a lot of money-conscious type-A executives might not enjoy hearing.  Two, high compensation doesn’t correlate with good performance.  High compensation can attract and keep the right people, but it can’t motivate the wrong people.  Three, the great companies don’t jump feet first into changes of direction.  Poor companies are always jumping from one quick fix to another; the best companies take it slowly and crawl before they run.  And they never jump on any bandwagon that doesn’t fit their Key Concept.  Four, great leaders don’t waste time trying to ‘rally the troops” or even manage performance.  That’s because they get the right people, the motivated people, first, and stand back to let them work.  The book is filled with such hard sensible dicta, backed by real evidence, that put a harsh spotlight on places that I’ve worked that most definitely were not great.  It’s a very useful, well-written, convincing and important book. 

four stars