Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

May 25, 2009
After the brilliant triumph of 2008's Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk
, Akunin's third and final Sister Pelagia mystery disappoints, in part because the 19th-century nun has little opportunity to display her deductive skills. Pelagia's use of her intellectual gifts for crime-solving draws the censure of St. Petersburg's Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, who believes she may be unfit to continue to wear the veil. Later, when someone bashes in the head of Manuila, the messianic leader of a rogue Jewish sect, aboard a steamboat on which Pelagia happens to be a passenger, her observations prove useful to the investigating officer. After several attempts on her life, she's shipped off to Palestine, where she continues to look for the truth behind Manuila's murder. In Palestine, she fends off a number of suitors, behaving less like a woman of faith with insights into human nature than a damsel in distress.

July 1, 2009
The shipboard murder of a man who's both more and less than he seems to be launches Sister Pelagia on her most ambitious case.

The leader who in life called himself Manuila is revered by the Foundlings, a messianic Jewish sect, and reviled by both Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews as a false prophet. But the biggest surprise about the man beaten to death aboard the Sturgeon is that he isn't Manuila after all; the apparent victim has disappeared as completely as his killer. When Sister Pelagia extends and corrects Inspector Dolinin's deductions about the crime, the investigator, who's clearly both nettled and impressed, presses her to take a more active role in the case. Even apart from Pelagia's normal reluctance to neglect her vocation for criminal inquiry, the obstacles are formidable. A series of attempts against her life sends her fleeing from Russia to Palestine, where she's stalked by a killer certain she'll lead him to Manuila. Back home, her alleged official allies are busy undermining her. The range of adventures along the way is fabulous. Sister Pelagia is rescued from a cave-in by the eponymous rooster. District Prosecutor Berdichevsky crosses swords with a mad count whose castle holds a bizarre collection of artifacts. The final revelation is nothing short of epochal.

That revelation is so long in coming, though, that newcomers overwhelmed by the rich feast Akunin spreads here may want to begin with the more modest fare offered in earlier volumes (Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk, 2008, etc.).

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 15, 2009
Sister Pelagia is backagain in disguise, though for her own protection. Aboard the steamer "Sturgeon", she uncovers the murder of a sect leader named Manuila. Sergei Sergeevich Dolinin, a member of the ministry who's shown up surprisingly fast and volunteered to head the investigation, is impressed by Pelagia's sharp assessment of the murder scene and asks her to accompany him to the sect leader's distant village. There, trouble awaitsthe dead man is not Manuila, a child dies, Pelagia nearly perishes in a mysterious caveand soon it becomes clear that Pelagia understands too much. Dressed as a well-to-do Russian traveler, Pelagia is off to the Holy Land, where she is hunted by an assassin even as she recklessly tracks down the real Manuila. Could he be Jesus himself, having escaped through a hole in time (with some help from the title's red cockerel)? VERDICT As grippingly plotted as Akunin's preceding mysteries (e.g., "Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog"), this work travels into mystical territory that some mystery readers might not appreciate, but the treatment is both thought-provoking and convincing.Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

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