Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2006
336 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
In 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. . . .
"An exciting resolution only partly offsets this incongruity (that the novel consists of two parts that read like two separate books)." - Publishers Weekly
"Akunin also pauses long enough for nods to Gogol, Conan Doyle and The Pink Panther. This time, however, the author's trademark playfulness is subordinated to a relatively sober account that makes this the most straightforward, even conventional, of Fandorin's adventures." - Kirkus Reviews.
This information about The Death of Achilles was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the Republic of Georgia in 1956. A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, Akunin published his first detective stories in 1998 and has already become one of the most widely read authors in Russia.
He is the author of ten Erast Fandorin novels listed below, and three Sister Pelagia novels. He lives in Moscow.
Erast Fandorin
Series
1. The Winter Queen (2003)
2. The Turkish Gambit (2005)
3. Murder on the Leviathan (2004, aka Leviathan)
4. The Death of Achilles (2005)
5. Special Assignments (2007)
6. The State Counsellor (2008)
7. The Coronation (2009)
8. She Lover of Death (2009)
9. He Lover of Death (2011)
10. The Diamond Chariot (2011)
... Full Biography
Link to Boris Akunin's Website
Name Pronunciation
Boris Akunin: The pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, pronounced CHAHAR-kesh-veely
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