I asked somebody if they thought that Akunin was a cozy writer, and I was told that soft-boiled was a better description. After the light shenanigans of the first story, we get to the meat and potatoes of the second and are very definitely not in cozy territory in any sense of the term. This is a particularly graphic tale, which shows once again how Akunin likes to experiment writing stories echoing the various sub-genres of the crime novel. They are exciting, and in the first case delightfully tongue-in-cheek which works very well with a chilly character like Fandorin as protagonist. He is a difficult person to like who seems to be forever viewed through the opposite end of a telescope, and so remains a distant, frosty star. In this book he has a new assistant in the persona of Anisii Tulipov, who almost plays Watson to his Holmes. But this does not quite come off, as Tulipov lacks the personality to be viewed close up, and is another, much fainter, distant star. This aside, these are wonderfully inventive books that have given a new dimension to crime fiction, and best of all give a compelling picture of Russia in the late 19th century from a Russian’s point of view. When I read them, I can’t help thinking that if anybody else wrote them it would be all Siberia, salt mines and secret police but we are saved all this, and given something else instead.