Special Assignments: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin

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Description

In Special Assignments, Erast Fandorin, nineteenth-century Russias suavest sleuth, faces two formidable new foes: One steals outrageous sums of money, the other takes lives. The Jack of Spades is a civilized swindler who has conned thousands of rubles from Moscows residentsincluding Fandorins own boss, Prince Dolgorukoi. To catch him, Fandorin and his new assistant, timid young policeman Anisii Tulipov, must don almost as many disguises as the grifter does himself. The Decorator is a different case altogether: A savage serial killer who believes he cleans the women he mutilates and takes his orders from on high, he must be given Fandorins most serious attentions.
Peopled by a rich cast of eccentric characters, and with plots that are as surprising as they are inventive, Special Assignments will delight Akunins many fans, while challenging the gentleman sleuths brilliant powers of detection.

Praise from England:

Boris Akunins wit and invention are a source of constant wonder.
Evening Standard

[Fandorin is] a debonair combo of Sherlock Holmes, DArtagnan and most of the soulful heroes of Russian literature. . . . This pair of perfectly balanced stories permit the character of Fandorin to grow.
The Sunday Telegraph

Agatha Christie meets James Bond: [Akunins] plots are intricate and tantalizing. . . . [These stories] are unputdownable and great fun.
Sunday Express

The beguiling, super-brainy, sexy, unpredictable Fandorin is a creation like no other in crime fiction.
The Times

Author Bio

BORIS AKUNIN is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the Republic of Georgia in 1956. A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, Akunin published his first detective stories in 1998 and has already become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. He is the author of eleven Erast Fandorin novels, including The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, Murder on the Leviathan, The Death of Achilles, and Special Assignments available from Random House Trade Paperbacks; and Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog and Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk, in the Sister Pelagia series. He lives in Moscow.