Word: fandorin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...means of mysterious injections, and Littleby's skull has been bashed in. To add insult to injury, his precious golden statue of the Hindu god Shiva has been stolen. Akunin is the pen name of a Russian academic whose mysteries--all starring stuttering, downy-cheeked young detective Erast Fandorin--are wildly popular in his country and are just catching on here...
...Littleby case is not in Fandorin's jurisdiction, but he becomes entangled in it aboard the Leviathan, a massive luxury liner cruising to Calcutta; Littleby's killer is known to be aboard, as is the Parisian inspector following his or her trail. All that is the setup for a ravishing jewel box of a mystery--the lock of which Fandorin gingerly, joyfully picks--and an homage to Christie, whose Death on the Nile is the mother ship of all nautical mysteries. Akunin also knows his Arthur Conan Doyle, and his Fandorin likes to indulge in showy displays of Holmesian observation...
...benighted Western world. (Akunin is actually the pen name of a respected Georgian academic, Grigory Chkhartishvili. Don't worry, no one in Russia can pronounce it either.) The case of the suicidal swain lands in the lap of a fresh-faced, foppish but surprisingly resourceful young detective named Erast Fandorin, who quickly becomes swept up in a glamorous whirl of moneyed expatriates and gambling, champagne-guzzling aristocrats. You'll understand right away what the Russians see in Akunin: he writes gloriously pre-Soviet prose, sophisticated and suffused in Slavic melancholy and thoroughly worthy of 19th century forebears like Gogol...
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