DescriptionIn 1882, after six years of foreign travel and adventure, renowned diplomat and detective Erast Fandorin returns to Moscow in the heart of Mother Russia. His Moscow homecoming is anything but peaceful. In the hotel where he and his loyal if impertinent manservant Masa are staying, Fandorin's old war-hero friend General Michel Sobolev ("Achilles" to the crowd) has been found dead, felled in his armchair by an apparent heart attack. But Fandorin suspects an unnatural cause. His suspicions lead him to the boudoir of the beautiful singer, "not exactly a courtesan", known as Wanda. Apparently, in Wanda's bed, the general secretly breathed his last.
DescriptionParis, 1878: Eccentric antiquarian Lord Littleby and his ten servants are found murdered in Littleby's mansion on the rue de Grenelle, and a priceless Indian shawl is missing. Police commissioner "Papa" Gauche recovers only one piece of evidence from the…
DescriptionMoscow, May 1876: What would cause a talented young student from a wealthy family to shoot himself in front of a promenading public in the Alexander Gardens? Decadence and boredom, most likely, is what the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division…
DescriptionWhat would cause a talented young student from a wealthy family to shoot himself in the Alexander Gardens in front of a promenading public? Perhaps it might be the ennui and decadence so popular in France and now migrating over to the upper classes of Russia. The chief of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Moscow Police certainly thinks so, and paradoxically puts his newest recruit, Erast Fandorin, on the case. Fandorin is a young man of irresistible charm, considerable naivete, and a penchant for inadvertently stumbling on the right answer. In his hands, the matter proves not to be an open-and-shut case of suicide, but a phenomenon that will repeat itself again. Before this case is over, this promising young man will have gone far.
