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Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Murder on the Leviathan by Boris Akunin

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

Back in 2014, I took a chance on a murder mystery translated from the Russian, by a Georgian author whose day job was a translator between Russian and Japanese. 

 

Boris Akunin is the nom de plume of Grigory Chkhartishvilli, who decided to write murder mysteries for a fascinating reason. Apparently, Russians are (or were?) fascinated by murder mysteries, but the ones available were mostly lurid dreck - so bad that people covered the books in paper to conceal they were reading them. In fact, Akunin’s wife was one of these readers. 

 

Akunin decided that the market needed something middlebrow - not as heavy as the great Russian masters, but well written. Kind of like, say, Agatha Christie. 

 

Having decided to write mysteries, Akunin then came up with a grand scheme to write each book in a different genre, covering the entire range of murder mystery plots. So, for example, the first book, The Winter Queen, is a conspiracy mystery - there is a mysterious and powerful terrorist organization at the heart of the story. In contrast, The Turkish Gambit is a spy mystery set during the Russo-Turkish war. 

 


 

Murder on the Leviathan is a murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie, and does homage to both Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. There is also a significant reference to The Moonstone with the mysterious Indian Raja and an immense collection of priceless jewels. 

 

What Akunin does with the style, of course, is quite different from the usual Christie novel. 

 

The basic setup of the mystery is this: Lord Littleby is a collector of Indian artifacts. He and his servants (and two of their children) are discovered dead in his home in Paris. The servants and their children are all at a table, and show no obvious signs of what caused their death. Lord Littleby, on the other hand, is upstairs in his collection room, with his skull bashed in. A case is broken, and a gold skull is missing. The skull later turns up in the Seine. 

 

The only clue left behind is a gold badge, which the investigator, Gauche, determines is a first-class ticket for the maiden voyage of the steam ship Leviathan, which has just left for India via the Suez Canal. Gauche boards at a stop, and determines which passengers are not wearing badges. He groups them into one of the group dining rooms where he can observe them all and try to determine who the murderer is. 

 

Soon thereafter, a mysterious Russian diplomat boards the ship as well. He is Erast Fandorin, the stammering, handsome, and prematurely aged hero of the series. 

 

The suspects are straight out of a Christie novel: the exotic Japanese military officer, an English aristocrat who seems to be insane, an professor who is an expert on Indian artifacts, a doctor, a married and pregnant Swiss woman, and a middle-aged Englishwoman who seems to have come into some money. While not a suspect, the doctor’s wife is assigned to the table, for obvious reasons. 

 

The deaths do not stop with the sailing of the ship, however. An African refugee is killed when he supposedly attacks another passenger, setting off a string of murders as Gauche and Fandorin close in on the truth. 

 

I won’t spoil any more than that of the plot - it is after all a murder mystery. 

 

There is plenty to talk about without giving spoilers, however. The book is written from several different perspectives, alternating between Gauche and the various suspects, either in their letters or diaries, or in the form of a third-party narrative from the point of view of that character. 

 

In an interesting twist, we never hear Fandorin’s perspective at all, except through the words of other characters. He is almost invisible a lot of the time, there as an observer, not a participant in the drama. Until the last third of the book, that is, when Gauche starts claiming to have a suspect, and Fandorin essentially shoots down his half-baked theories. 

 

The twists come fast and furious in the last third of the book, as they should in a good mystery. In a nod to Murder on the Orient Express, nobody in this book is who they appear to be. Everyone has a secret. So does Fandorin, of course, but anyone who has read the first two books in the series knows what those are already. 

 

I mean, he has his stammer, his grey hair, and his PTSD from the first book, when his young bride was blown up by a terrorist bomb. There is a moment in this book when he lets Clarissa Stamp (the middle-aged Englishwoman who has fallen in love with him) see a bit of his psyche. 

 

“You see, I am b-basically very timid and uncertain of myself.”

“You, timid?” Clarissa asked, even more astounded.

“Yes. There are two things I am really afraid of: appearing foolish or ridiculous and…dropping my guard.”

No, she couldn’t understand this at all.

“Your guard?”

“You see, I learned very early what it means to lose someone, and it frightened me badly - probably for the rest of my life. While I am alone, my defenses against fate are strong, and I fear nothing and nobody. For a man like me, it is best to be alone.”

 

This actually was my only disappointment in the book - Fandorin is a great character, but we got too little of him. I understand why, given the way Akunin chose to write the book, but still. 

 

Another thing that was fascinating about the book was that it didn’t merely imitate the plot and style of a Christie mystery - it reproduced the bigotry and colonialist assumptions. Because the series is set in the 1870s (more or less), all the usual Victorian racism and sexism exists in the characters. (Just as they did, unfortunately, in Christie’s later books, and in Collins’ works as well.) Akunin isn’t content to just make a period piece out of this. He actively subverts the stereotypes. So, the “negro” as the white characters refer to him isn’t a stock type (even though he a very minor character): he is a more complex person, the opposite of who the white characters think he is. (Other than Fandorin, who has been, from the beginning of the series, one who refuses to traffic in prejudice.) 

 

Likewise, the Indian character defies categorization, and everything the characters expect from the Japanese man turns out to be its opposite. Akunin likewise subverts expectations about gender throughout the book. 

 

In fact, the book itself makes it clear from the beginning that it doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. After Gauche finds the badge, his thoughts make that clear.

 

Taking a closer look, he chortled in delight. Here was a stroke of uncommonly good luck, the kind that occurred only in crime novels.

 

Also fascinating is the conversation that Gauche has with Fandorin over the ways of identifying perpetrators. Gauche is familiar with what we would call biometrics today - the careful measurement of bodies with the hope of identifying a particular person. At the time this book is set in, this was taken seriously. However, the Western world had not yet figured out how to use fingerprints as identification. Fandorin, with his knowledge of the East from his diplomatic job, explains it to Gauche, and notes that China used fingerprints that way for hundreds of years. 

 

Reginald Milford-Stokes, the English aristocrat, writes letters every day to his wife, who he says is waiting for him in Tahiti, which is how his side of the story is told. He is a bit pompous, to comedic effect. I noted one line in particular. 

 

As I sail through these dead salt meadows and endless sand dunes, I marvel unceasingly at the stubborn courage and antlike diligence of humankind in waging its never-ending struggle, doomed to inevitable defeat, against all-powerful Chronos. 

 

Milford-Stokes is no fan of Fandorin, and he explains his reasons - and reveals his prejudice. 

 

You are aware, Emily, of my feelings regarding Russia, that misshapen excrescence that has extended over half of Europe and a third of Asia. Russia seeks to disseminate its own parody of the Christian religion and its own barbarous customs throughout the entire world, and Albion stands as the only barrier in the path of these new Huns. 

 

That’s a keen ear for British (and American) jingoism. This is one reason I read books in translation - it is fascinating to see things from the other side. 

 

Ms. Kleber, the pregnant wife going to meet her husband, tends to be irritating to the other passengers - she makes too much of the pregnancy, and expects special treatment. However, there is an interesting scene where Milford-Stokes displays a fear of pregnancy and pregnant woman. (We do not find out why until the end, but his personal reasons notwithstanding, this was actually a bit of a think back in the day - the idea that the touch of a pregnant, or worse, menstruating woman could harm a man.)

 

“Why do you draw back like that, sir?” she babbled in a quavering voice. “Don’t be afraid; pregnancy is not infectious.” Then she concluded, no longer quavering: “At least not for men.” 

 

I mentioned the later conversation between Clarissa and Fandorin. There is an earlier moment that is fun as well. They are discussing literature, and Fandorin guesses that she skips the battle scenes. 

 

“Women always skip battle scenes,” said Fandorin with a shrug. “At least women of your temperament.”

“And just what is my temperament?” Clarissa asked in a wheedling voice, feeling she cut a poor figure playing the coquette.

“An inclination to view yourself skeptically and the world around you romantically.” 

 

One final line, which I won’t give context for, because of spoilers, except to say that one character has killed another with a revolver. They stammer, “I…I killed [them].”

 

“Yes, I noticed,” Fandorin said coolly.

 

I have enjoyed the first three of this series. The next two installments appear to be available at our library. There appear to be an additional five available in English, but after that, it doesn’t look like the rest were ever translated. Perhaps someday they will be. 

 

All of the books that have been translated were done by Andrew Bromfield, who I think really gets the tone and suspense right. It is impossible for me to know how well the jokes and references come across the language divide, but I give Bromfield a thumbs up for a thoroughly enjoyable English version.  

 

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