Category Archives: Boris Akunin

Review: Pelagia & the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin

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After an abandoned attempt to read Death in Breslau I borrowed a second book from the local library to kick off this year’s Eastern Europe Challenge.

Pelagia & the White Bulldog is the first novel of a series set in late 19th century Russia and introduces Sister Pelagia: “a fidgety, curious woman, undignified in her movements and not cut out to be a nun.” She is tasked by the Bishop of Zavolzhie to investigate a situation which is vexing his Aunt who claims that someone has tried to poison the last remaining examples of the the white bulldogs with brown ears that her husband had especially bred before his death. That is really all I can tell you about the plot without delving into action that does not take place until the half-way point of the novel. Although I suppose it is not spoiling things too much to add that there is a second (eventually intertwined) storyline relating to the appointment of Vladimir Lvovich Bubenstov as a representative of the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod to investigate religious improprieties in the town.

I have to admit to struggling with this book and in some ways I shouldn’t have been surprised. One of the reasons I stopped a formal study of literature during my University days was that I couldn’t face reading what I came to think of as ‘another bloody Russian’ that the syllabus seemed to be full of. I don’t know if it is the original writing or the way the language is translated into English but the one thing the Russian fiction of my acquaintance has in common is an unwillingness to use 10 words when 200 (or 2000) are available. I found the flowery, long-winded prose of Tolstoy and Dostoyesvky dread-inducing all those years ago but I thought perhaps a less ‘worthy’, more recent title might be different. Alas I did not find it so. Amidst the interminably lengthy descriptions of nothing much at all there is a story, of sorts, here but not one that kept me particularly engaged (and not one that couldn’t have been told in one-third the word count). I teased out some interesting observations about the politics of the day but as a mystery the book left a lot to be desired in that the culprit for the crimes that were eventually described was obvious almost from the outset and the way in which Pelagia deduced the answer bordered on the inane.

I didn’t find the characters particularly enjoyable either. I thought I would like Pelagia’s quirkiness but she soon turned into a kind of reject from a Carry On movie what with knocking over fruit bowls and spilling tea in men’s crotches and whatnot. Slapstick has never been my humour of choice. The rest of the characters were all pretty formulaic for the intimate melodrama the book turned into, though the way Bubenstov hid is evilness was the most entertaining thing about the book for me.

I know there are readers who don’t share my admiration for brevity and conciseness and more who simply enjoy the kind of writing that Akunin has produced here. I am probably the poorer for not being able to appreciate this particular style but it can’t be helped. For me the hints of wry humour and mildly interesting plot were lost in the flowery, tangent-riddled prose that made me want to poke my own eyes out with one of the knitting needles that Pelagia carried everywhere.

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I couldn’t find much in the way of online reviewing of this book but did come across a 2006 review in the UK paper The Independent that describes a similar reaction to mine. However in the interests of fairness you might want to check Amazon for some more positive reviews.

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My rating 2/5 (yes it probably is a little low, but it’s my opinion after all, as all the reviews here are, I’m not making any claims to objectivity)
Author website http://www.boris-akunin.com/
Translator Andrew Bromfield
Publisher Weidenfield & Nicolson [this translation 2006, original edition 2000]
ISBN 0297852507
Length 295 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in the Sister Pelagia series
Source borrowed from the library

Crime Fiction Alphabet: C is for Clergy

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As I picked up my first book for the East European Reading Challenge, which features a sleuthing nun in 19th century Russia, it struck me that religious folk of one sort or another seem to pop up rather a lot in crime fiction. This is probably understandable to an extent when it comes to historical times as people in clerical roles were often the ones with greater education and more resources than the average person would have had. I’m not sure what explains the attraction of clerical sleuths in more modern crime fiction stories. What do you think?

Historical clergy/sleuths

Sir Derek Jacobi as Cadfael

One of the most well-known of the clerical sleuths from history is Ellis Peters’ creation Brother Cadfael, a Benedictine monk and herbalist living in Shrewsbury Abbey during the first half of the 12th Century. Having come to the clerical life in his 40′s and after periods as a soldier and sailor, Cadfael is a little more worldly-wise than his fellow monks however there is a strong element of faith in the character too, demonstrated through his many acts of help and kindness provided to those in need. I must admit I’ve only read one of the books (so far), A Morbid Taste for Bones, but was introduced to the character through watching Derek Jacobi in the title role of the television series which is one of those rare ones that has done justice to its source material.

The novel that prompted this post is Boris Akunin‘s Sister Palagia and the White Bulldog which is the first of 3 novels to feature the nun. In Russia during the final years of the 19th Century the young nun is sent to investigate the poisoning of a rare bulldog in a remote part of the country. She soon comes to believe that dogs are being poisoned as a means of killing their devoted owner. I am about a third of the way through the novel so far and religion is certainly playing its part in the story but I’m not sure how much impact overall it will have.

Peter Tremayne has a long running series featuring a nun and legal advocate in 7th Century Ireland which has proved so popular it has inspired the creation of the International Sister Fidelma Society. I haven’t read any of this series yet but do have A Prayer for the Damned in my TBR pile which looks to be from late in the series as Fidelma’s plans to marry are thrown into disarray when an unpopular Abbott who is demanding that she uphold her religious vows is murdered.

Caroline Roe has a series set in the 1350′s in Spain which features a blind physician, Isaac of Girona, who investigate crimes often with the assistance of the city’s Bishop. In Remedy for Treason the city is in the grip of the plague when a nun is found dead at the public baths in strange circumstances and the Bishop calls on Isaac to investigate.

Modern clergy/sleuths

The first of the modern clerical sleuths is probably G K Chesterton‘s Father Brown who first appeared in 1911′s The Innocence of Father Brown, a collection of 12 short stories featuring the priest who Chesterton apparently based in part on the priest who tutored him through his own conversion to Catholicism. Father Brown is an intuitive detective who uses the information he has gained from observing people and hearing their inner most secrets during confession to deduce the culprits of the crimes he investigates. and there is often a real spiritual element to his denouements.

Although he is known for historical fiction standalones too, it is Phil Rickman’s modern series that features a cleric. Merrily Watkins  is an Anglican priest and single mum living near the Welsh border in England. She has featured in 11 novels so far, starting with 1998′s The Wine of Angels in which she takes up her new role as the vicar of Ledwardine and finds pagan influences in the town and a possible haunting by a 17th century murder victim. On the subject of writing a clerical mystery Rickman says (from his website)

“If you’d told me twelve years ago that I’d be writing a whole series of books about a woman priest, I might have thrown you out and barred all the doors…It took a long time for me to accept that if I was looking for a world of uncertainty, insecurity and paranoia, a woman priest was exactly what I needed. Especially one appointed to the post of Deliverance Consultant – or, as it used to be known, Diocesan Exorcist”.

Clare Ferguson is the newly ordained episcopal priest of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in upstate New York in Julia Spencer-Flemming‘s debut novel In the Bleak Midwinter. She discovers a baby on the back steps of the church and is soon investigating a murder which seems to be associated with the abandoned baby. Clare is somewhat unorthodox in her approach to religion but her faith is tested when she falls in love with the married chief of police.

There are several religious issues explored alongside the investigation of a murder in Joseph Telushkin‘s The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl. A young rabbi, Daniel Winter is provided information which is not given to police and so he runs a parallel investigation to the official one. This idea of people telling their religious leaders things they might tell police is a common one in these clerical mysteries.

Being a prison chaplain gives John Jordan an interesting perspective on crime. In 2004′s Blood of the Lamb by Michael Lister he investigates the murder of the daughter of an ex-con turned TV evangelist who is giving a service in the Florida prison in which Jordan works when his daughter is murdered there. The story causes Jordan to question his own faith and beliefs as well as troubling his newly acquired sobriety.

Irene Allen‘s short series of books features Elizabeth Elliot who is Clerk of a Quaker Meeting House in Massachusetts. In the second novel of the series, Quaker Witness, Elliot becomes involved with the case of a young college student who has filed a complaint of sexual harassment against her professor and then becomes a suspect when he is murdered.

Do you like reading crime fiction featuring a member of the clergy? Do you know of any other clerical crime fiction I should be checking out? It would be especially interesting to find some sleuths of different faiths other than the predominantly Christian ones I have read about.

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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week (a book title, an author name, a subject…) Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

This is the second round of the meme which was first run from late 2009 to early 2010. My contributions that time were discussions of books with one word titles.