It’s the middle of a hot, dusty St. Petersburg summer in the late 1860s. A doctor brings home a fancy box of chocolates for his wife and son—a strange gift on a scorching Saturday afternoon. Within an hour, both mother and child die an excruciating death, and the doctor is immediately arrested, suspected of poisoning. As investigator Porfiry Petrovich concedes, in such cases the obvious solution often turns out to be the correct solution. And in the city’s sweltering, oppressive atmosphere, even he lacks the energy to delve any deeper.
But when additional, apparently unconnected, murders occur on the other side of town, a subtle and surprising pattern starts to emerge. Porfiry is forced to reassess his assumptions and follow a tenuous, uncertain trail that takes him into the hidden, squalid heart of the city and brings him face to face with incomprehensible horror and cruelty.
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“Set in St. Petersburg in 1868, Morris’s superb second novel to feature Porfiry Petrovich (after The Gentle Axe) puts the detective borrowed from Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment on the trail of a series of vile murders…. Morris captures this world with expert strokes, never content to merely peddle exotica, but making sure that his characters spring convincingly from their setting. This novel stands out from a number of fine czarist-era mysteries—by Russians and foreigners alike—like a Fabergé egg at a yard sale.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Morris seems to have hit his stride. His characters come alive in all their destitution, pretension, madness, fractiousness, and humanity. His portrait of the city, abandoned by the well-to-do in summer, offers a rich, palpably fetid sense of place, and his depiction of nineteenth-century Russian society, festering with revolutionary notions and old grudges, is compelling.” —Booklist
“Investigator Petrovich is a very engaging hero, eagle-eyed, with a sharp laconic wit, endless patience for his geeky sidekick and a soothing manner, especially when faced with beautiful, flirtatious women. Full marks to the author for bringing Petrovich back to life in this ambitious work that is a real pleasure to read.” —The Economist
“Morris’s descriptions of the horrors of insanitary slum dwellings in St Petersburg are extraordinarily vivid, but the most striking feature of the novel is the way in which Porfiry’s sophisticated understanding of human nature compensates for the limited investigatory tools at his disposal.” —The Sunday Times (UK)
