She Lover of Death

January 6, 2020
Akunin’s intriguing, if flawed, eighth mystery featuring investigator Erast Fandorin (after 2019’s The Coronation) opens with a series of newspaper articles detailing several tragic deaths in 1900 Moscow. After a “latter-day Romeo and Juliet” take their own lives, a correspondent for the Moscow Courier speculates in print that his city has become the base for a suicide club, similar to ones that have existed in Berlin and London. The concept of a “secret society of death worshippers” who pledge to kill themselves is a promising one, and Akunin does a good job of bringing the reader into the mindset of a wannabe member of such a group, Marya Mironava, who arrives in the city in pursuit of a love-interest. An anonymous agent whom series fans will recognize as Fandorin goes undercover to infiltrate the society in an effort to destroy it, but newcomers may wonder why no one named Erast Fandorin appears in the book. This is not a good starting place for the uninitiated. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Ritterberg Literary.

February 15, 2020
Having reached the age of majority at the beginning of the twentieth century, Masha Mironova starts a new life by following a young man to Moscow, the City of Dreams. There she takes the name Columbine, fashioning outrageous outfits for herself and wearing a live garter snake as jewelry, as the man introduces her to the exclusive Lovers of Death suicide club. As the rise of suicide among young people becomes a concern in the city, the club, directed by the hypnotic leader who calls himself Prospero, is infiltrated by a journalist, a doctor, and Holmesian detective Erast Petrovich Fandorin, who takes a special interest in Columbine. Fandorin's mission becomes more urgent as two of the country's leading poets die, and some members of the club appear not to have committed suicide but to have been murdered. Akunin (the pen name for Russian-born essayist and critic Grigory Chkhartishvili) adds interest and texture here with multiple narrators, but it's the witty Fandorin who shines.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)