A Vengeful Longing: A St Petersburg Mystery

Do you like engaging, well-written detective stories with a sprinkling of gore? Fancy your characters inhabiting smelly 19th Century Russia and having good Russian names, with some scene-setting historical detail that never gets in the way of the story? Like the kind of book you don't really want to put down? In that case, A Vengeful Longing is for you. Or you might want to start off with A Gentle Axe, the first in the series, which I'm off to purchase immediately. I hope Morris has already started the next one!

This is a historical crime novel to be savored slowly. I enjoyed the lush descriptions, the leisurely character development, and the strong sense of both place and time throughout the book. It was also fascinating to watch the "magistrate" (detective, in our time) work with the primitive investigative tools of the time. No special effects-laden, CSI-take-off here; just good hard police work and a great deal of reason, logic, and observation.

In the steaming St.Petersberg summer of 1868, a doctor's wife and retarded son die a hideous death by poisoning. The doctor is the prime suspect of Investigating Magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich, who discovers that the poison was contained in the special chocolates that the doctor brought home for his wife every week. Very shortly afterwards, a man is stabbed and left to die on the street, and an army colonel is shot to death in his own home. Despite there being at first, no obvious connection beteen the three events, Porfiry is convinced that there is a definite link which connects them all and, with his new assitant, Virginsky, travels all over the city, interviewing anyone who had anything at all to do with any of the victims. His travels take him to unbelievably appalling slums which make those of Dickens's London seem like palaces..I've never read worse! The conditions under which the poorest of the peasant classes live defy description so that the reader may see the roots of the Russian revolution forming. I cannot say that it was a particularly enjoyable read but it was certainly a well written account of murder and abject poverty,

It is June, 1868, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky, who had been an impoverished and emaciated student living on the edge in R. N. Morris's debut novel, "The Gentle Axe," has put on weight and dresses respectably now. He is a university graduate with a degree in law who has decided to follow in the footsteps of Porfiry Petrovich, "one of the best investigating magistrates in St. Petersburg." Petrovich, who works in the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes, has agreed to take the young man on as his assistant. Little does Virginsky know that he and his mentor are about to embark on a bizarre homicide investigation during which they will witness appalling scenes of carnage and peer into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. First, a mother and her young son are poisoned after eating chocolates laced with a deadly substance; next, a former army colonel is gunned down in his apartment; finally, a drunken man is stabbed through the heart and left in the street to die. On the surface, these victims appear to have nothing in common, and in each case there is a convenient suspect. However, Porfiry is not convinced that the obvious answer is correct. He studies the background of the victims and uses his considerable understanding of the workings of the criminal mind to get to the bottom of this perplexing enigma. "A Vengeful Longing" is an absorbing mystery that is enlivened by deliciously dark humor, spirited dialogue, and intriguing glimpses into the Russian class system during the late nineteenth century. The well-drawn cast includes Dr. Martin Meyer, a doctor with a degree in toxicology who is suspected of administering a deadly substance to his wife and child; Gorshkov, a former factory worker whose mind became unbalanced after the deaths of his daughters; and Lieutenant Salytov, a bigoted and quick-tempered policeman who resents Porfiry and constantly tries the magistrate's patience. Although he presents an unruffled demeanor to his colleagues, Porfiry has a compulsive streak evidenced by his chain smoking; he is rarely without a cigarette in his mouth. Nor is he an infallible detective who quickly deduces the answer to every question. Rather, his strength lies in his tenacity and his ability to think logically and imaginatively. With Virginsky, Porfiry shows a softer side, taking the time to instruct his apprentice in the finer points of criminal detection and encouraging the young man to express his ideas without fear of ridicule. R. N. Morris beautifully captures the atmosphere of St. Petersburg, contrasting the fetid tenements where the starving poor live in degrading conditions with the well-appointed and spacious homes of the upper classes. The author also takes us inside the walls of an insane asylum, where the mentally ill are subject to relentless abuse. Revolution is in the air. The have-nots are becoming fed up with their miserable living conditions as well as with the fossilized bureaucrats w