It would seem that Russians are looking for someone to look up to: someone with a strong hand and an easy touch. And with so few real-life role models forthcoming, Russia's literati has had to invent one.
Enter Erast Petrovich Fandorin, protagonist of the riveting and unpredictable The Winter Queen (Azazel in the original Russian). The plot centers around Fandorin's first adventure: Seeing that a Moscow bon vivant's suicide is more than an isolated case, security services greenhorn Fandorin pursues a conspiracy bent on upsetting the global balance of power.
Set in the mid-1870s, the mystery takes place amid a period of rapid technological and political innovation, giving the reader the sense that the best tools for investigating crime in an era of progress––reason, quick wits, and a lot of luck––never change.
The author, Boris Akunin, says he began writing mystery novels in the 1990s, when cheap, gore and sex-filled thrillers achieved extraordinary popularity in Russia. His wife, so embarrassed by the content, would hide the books when reading them in public. Akunin's response was to write detective and spy thrillers that people would be unafraid to pull out of a pocket or purse on a train, highly readable but with artistic merit.
That artistic merit extends beyond passing references to the beloved Russian classics. Akunin shows a knack for creating scenes without detracting from The Winter Queen's ripping pace, painting London gothic and a sticky Moscow spring with equal ease.
What brings the novel to life is its protagonist, who has a preternatural gift for the deductive method. Like any budding genius, he's ingratiatingly naive, and his intellect gets him into more than a little trouble. His unaffected patriotism never wavers despite the corruption and entitlement surrounding him, and his love for truth-with-a-capital-T makes that patriotism more substantial than a pair of rose-tinted glasses.
Russians love him, and Akunin's Fandorin novels have sold about 18 million copies in Russia so far.
Perhaps the reason for this love is that Fandorin can be masculine (a la Putin) without being macho, while being dedicated to Russia (a la Gorbachev) without destroying everything he touches. He's effective and smart without being overly clever, and his mild personality makes him an ingratiating analog to Sherlock Holmes.
Akunin's novels have been received a lukewarm reception here in the States, however, for perhaps this very reason. Fandorin doesn't stand for truth and justice with the same zealotry Lisabeth Salander does in The Millennium Trilogy, nor does he indulge in pulpy conspiracy theories found in the likes of The Da Vinci Code.
Instead, Fandorin is firmly rooted to his time and place, a bridge between the generations that came of age in the Soviet Union, and the high tide of the Russian Empire.
