In brief: When ten people are murdered at the Parisian residence of Lord Littleby on 15th March 1878, Commissioner Gauche is determined to solve the ‘crime of the century’. His investigations lead him to join the maiden voyage of the Leviathan, the grandest ship ever to be launched. Assembling his suspects each evening in the ship’s Windsor salon, Gauche endeavours to unpick the mystery, upstaged at every turn by the razor-sharp intellect of Erast Fandorin.

In detail: Set in the 19th century, Boris Akunin’s page-turning novel has the ingredients of a classic ‘English country house murder’ mystery: a set of suspects assembled within a confined space, each of whom has something to hide, a multitude of misleading twists and turns, and a dénouement where all is revealed. Plotted as tightly as a snugly fitting set of Russian dolls, Murder on the Leviathan reads like an homage to that mistress of the genre Agatha Christie, with more than a nod to Conan Doyle. Clues are strewn through the novel with every loose end satisfyingly tied in.

The novel opens with a set of papers and newspaper cuttings announcing the shocking murder of the English collector of antiquities Lord Littleby, together with nine others in his Parisian home. Commissioner Gauche, three years from retirement and eager to boost his pension with a promotion, is determined to solve the crime and is convinced that the murderer will be travelling aboard the Leviathan. Having assembled a set of suspects Gauche sets about his investigations. At each conclusion he is either pre-empted or gently corrected by the Russian diplomat, Erast Fandorin. There are skeletons in the closets of several suspects, some of which are crucial to the plot, others strategically placed red herrings. Clarissa Stamp denies visiting Paris despite holding a fan engraved with an address suspiciously close to Lord Littleby’s house. Gintaro Aono professes to be an army officer but is surprisingly lacking in knowledge about military matters. Reginald Milford-Stokes writes loving letters to his absent wife yearning for an end to their separation. Pregnant and travelling alone, Renate Kleber happily receives the doting attentions of the first lieutenant, Charles Renier. Eventually a motive for the murder emerges: rather than the priceless statuette used to fracture Lord Littleby’s skull, it was the Indian painted shawl that the murderer coveted, knowing that it held a clue which would eventually lead to the lost treasure of the fabulously wealthy Rajah Bagdassar. As the mystery unravels and several more murders are committed, all secrets are laid bare with several twists and turns taken even after it appears to be solved. Erast Fandorin emerges as a force to be reckoned with and a worthy rival to Sherlock Holmes.

About the author

Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili. He was born in the republic of Georgia in 1956 and has lived in Moscow since 1958. He graduated with a degree in Eastern History and Philology and gained a postgraduate qualification in Japanese literature and language. He is the President of the Academic Committee of the Japanese Library and of the Pushkin Foundation and the translator of several Japanese authors such as Yukio Mishima. The Winter Queen, the first in the Erast Fandorin series, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 2003. Boris Akunin is one of Russia’s most popular contemporary authors.

For discussion

• ‘Oh no, young man, the thread here leads into good society,’ page 7. Commissioner Gauche seems very confident in his assertion to the newspaper reporter, but how good a detective does he prove to be? How does he approach the investigation?
• Each of Commissioner Gauche’s suspects conceals a closely guarded secret. What are those secrets and what part do they play in the novel’s plot?
• At what point did you guess the true identity of the murderer? What prompted you to that conclusion? Who else did you suspect and why?
• The novel is set in 1878. How well does Boris Akunin succeed in capturing the period and how does he do it?
• How would you describe Akunin’s writing style? Why do you think he chose to tell the story through the voices of different characters? To what extent do you feel that the novel’s structure is successful?
• What part does humour play in the novel? How would you describe that humour? Were there particular passages that you found amusing and if so what were they?
• ‘Seven years of life among the red-haired barbarians have failed to inure me to some of their disgusting habits,’ page 82. ‘Look at him now, the very image of the inscrutable Oriental!’, page 105. How does Gintaro’s view of himself compare with the Westerners’ view of him? What does he think of them? How accurate are the other characters’ assessments of each other?
• Many reviewers compared Murder on the Leviathan with Agatha Christie’s novels when it was published. If you have read Christie how similar did you find Akunin’s novel to her books? How does it differ?
• What did you think of the dénouement? How satisfying did you find it?

Suggested further reading

The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
The Fig Eater by Jody Shields