The Turkish Gambit
by Boris Akunin
Random House
As the first chapter of this retro-thriller draws to a close, a mysterious stranger comes to the aid of a damsel in distress with the admonishment, "This is not a novel by Mayne Reid. Things could have turned out very badly."
Nice girls in tight spots are nothing new to historical fiction, nor are chance encounters a rarity in literary espionage, but invoking the 19th century boilerplate tales of derring-do by a writer as familiar in Russia as he is forgotten in the West — this is pure Boris Akunin.
In less than a decade, Akunin has risen from obscurity to become Russia's most popular writer of detective stories. Redolent with romantic nostalgia and barbed with intellectual acumen, his period mysteries appeal to a broad audience at home and abroad. His talent is in creating a cosmopolitan round-up of "usual suspects" — the cast of "The Turkish Gambit" includes an Irish nationalist, a Romanian count, a Greek homosexual, and an elusive Mohammedan conspirator — and training on them a distinctly Russian magnifying glass. Adorned lavishly with references to Gogol, Tolstoy and the utopian theories of Charles Fourier, even Akunin's most swashbuckling adventure is never "a novel by Mayne Reid."
Technically the second in Akunin's 11-book series featuring the mild-mannered sleuth Erast Fandorin, "The Turkish Gambit" is the third to be published in English. ("Murder on the Leviathan," the third book in the Russian series, was published in 2004). It takes place in 1877 as Russian and Ottoman forces wage war in the Balkans. Titular Councilor Fandorin, returning from a lengthy captivity as a Serbian volunteer, crosses paths with Varvara Suvorova, a young lady from St. Petersburg left high and dry in a menacing tavern on the Bulgarian border. Fate binds them tighter when they arrive at a nearby Russian field army to find a hotbed of treason only they can extinguish.
Revolving around the siege of Plevna and the near breach of Constantinople by a single hot-headed general, "The Turkish Gambit" is another of Akunin's satisfying historical dramas. The inglorious Russo-Turkish campaign of 1877, which claimed 150,000 Russian casualties in exchange for minor land gains, an inconclusive armistice and increased European hostility, is a particularly well-suited tableau for Fandorin, who has become a world-weary cynic bearing little resemblance to the upstart dandy in Akunin's debut "The Winter Queen."
For her part, Varvara promises to be a perfect heroine: she is plucky, progressive and pretty. Sadly, she is also insufferable. Frequent bouts of self-deprecation and outrage do not mitigate her vanity and melodrama. Cast among a sea of suitors, she delights in male attention while haughtily proclaiming "One does not kiss modern women's hand." She chastises herself for being a "shrinking violet, prim young lady, weaker sex," when the sight of carnage gets the better of her, but she returns to watch the battle only because Fandorin has already argued against such an observation.
If nothing else, Varvara, with her dilettante's dogma, her fickle flirtation and her taste for adventure, is a perfect foil for Fandorin's ambivalence towards the heroic promises of war and liberty. At times, one hopes that Akunin will grant his heroine a transforming maturation; more often, one simply doesn't care what becomes of the tiresome girl as long as she doesn't blow the case.
Readers new to Akunin will find in "The Turkish Gambit" the same light touch, quick tempo and graceful wit that distinguish his earlier books. Fans of Fandorin, especially those who lamented the usurping role of the French detective Gustave Gauche in "Murder on the Leviathan", will once again wish the long-suffering titular counselor could rid himself of his less endearing sidekick.
— Elizabeth Kiem (eckiem@yahoo.com)
