A Vengeful Longing: A Novel - Hardcover

Morris, R. N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594201803 ISBN 13: 9781594201806

Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The, 2008

Synopsis

A follow-up to The Gentle Axe finds nineteenth-century Russian investigator Porfiry Petrovich doubting an initial conclusion that a St. Petersburg doctor is responsible for his wife's and son's poisoning deaths when the case is tied to another murder across town. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

R. N. Morris was born in Manchester in 1960 and now lives in North London with his wife and two children. He sold his first short story to a teenage girls’ magazine while still a student at Cambridge University, where he read classics. Making his living as a freelance copywriter, he has continued to write, and occasionally publish, fiction. One of his stories, “The Devil’s Drum,” was turned into a one-act opera, which was performed at the Purcell Room in London’s South Bank. Another, “Revenants,” was published as a comic book.

Reviews

Starred Review. Set in St. Petersburg in 1868, Morris's superb second novel to feature Porfiry Petrovich (after The Gentle Axe) puts the detective borrowed from Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment on the trail of a series of vile murders. When the wife and son of a doctor die after consuming a box of chocolates at their dacha, the obvious suspect is the morphine-addicted doctor. Then a shooting and a stabbing lead Petrovich elsewhere—to an elegant confectioner's full of pastries and possible revolutionaries as well as to the city's underworld. As Petrovich breaks in a new detective, the aptly named Pavel Virginsky, he introduces colleague and reader alike to the Russian capital and to the ills of the entire society. Morris captures this world with expert strokes, never content to merely peddle exotica, but making sure that his characters spring convincingly from their setting. While the person behind the crimes is a little unlikely, this novel stands out from a number of fine czarist-era mysteries—by Russians and foreigners alike—like a Fabergé egg at a yard sale. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Midsummer in St. Petersburg, 1868. It is hot and oppressive, and the reek of sewage, swarms of flies, and a cholera outbreak have the entire city on edge, even Investigative Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich. But Porfiry has three murder investigations to pursue, and he must train a new assistant, a brash young man he’d previously suspected of murder (The Gentle Axe, 2007). Each murder appears open-and-shut, but the cerebral Porfiry divines a connection and a single devious mind behind the crimes. The Gentle Axe was a solid debut, a reincarnation of Dostoevsky’s character from Crime and Punishment. But here Morris seems to have hit his stride. His characters come alive in all their destitution, pretension, madness, fractiousness, and humanity. His portrait of the city, abandoned by the well-to-do in summer, offers a rich, palpably fetid sense of place, and his depiction of nineteenth-century Russian society, festering with revolutionary notions and old grudges, is compelling. --Thomas Gaughan

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594201803
• ISBN 13: 9781594201806
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336