About Erast Fandorin
"If Pushkin had tried his hand at detective fiction, it might have turned out something like this."
—The New York Times Book Review
"A tasty dish . . . There are secret panels, hidden tunnels, a false mustache, intercepted letters, gunfights, and a glamorous female villain. . . .
Akunin knows how to build suspense, but he also enjoys himself; he shows the reader a good time."
—The Boston Globe
"Mystery readers should enjoy this story. It is as Russian, and as international, as caviar and vodka! A crafty tale full of atmosphere,
character, and action. I look forward to hearing more about the young detective Erast Fandorin."
—Ann Perry
Bond, make room for Fandorin, borscht-sipping Czarist sleuth
By Arthur Spiegelman
Bond. James Bond. Make room for another international man of mystery: Fandorin. Erast Petrovich Fandorin.
And hold the martinis–this guy sips borscht.
Also garage the Aston Martin. Fandorin takes trains and troikas.
He also wears whalebone corsets, endures harsh Russian winters and is puppy dog-like in his devotion to the czar circa 1876.
Fandorin is a big hit back east–Moscow and the provincial capitals of the former Soviet Union plus Germany and Japan.
Boris Akunin’s 10 novels about the czarist super-sleuth have sold eight million copies since the character first made his appearance
in the mid-1990s and Akunin is credited with creating a new genre in Russian literature.
But he is only now being translated into English with The Winter Queen.
Random House, which is publishing The Winter Queen, in English, thinks it might have an international sensation on its hands:
a Russian detective who combines the derring-do of Bond with touches of Sherlock Holmes.
And, of course, the publishing house, is calling Akunin the Russian John Grisham.
“He is a superman,” the writer says of his character, “a Russian superman. ...
This means he makes mistakes. He doesn’t always win, but he has a different girlfriend in every novel and he ages from book to book.”
He has sold 8 million copies worldwide, but he's cautious about his American appeal.
"I know that you rarely see books that have been translated on the best-seller lists here," he says. "Well, we shall see ..."
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