It’s a Mystery

The answer to what is the most popular genre of fiction in the US depends on how you define popular. In pure number of copies sold, children’s literature is far and away the most popular, but the total page count (never mind word count) puts it well down the list. What about adult fiction? According to surveys the mystery/detective/thriller genre is most popular, and about half of all regular fiction readers (who are a minority of the adult population) have read at least one mystery novel in the past year. Yet sales figures from publishers show that “adult general fiction” sells more copies than mysteries. Are the respondents lying? Maybe, though it is entirely possible that they buy more general fiction but actually like the mysteries they read better, so in their minds they are telling the truth. The most profitable genre for publishers is neither mysteries nor general fiction but romance literature including some types of erotica such as Fifty Shades of Grey. Romance fiction (surprisingly, given the state of the real thing at present) is the second most popular adult genre according to surveys. Fantasy and science fiction aren’t far behind, trailed by historical fiction and various niche categories. (Considering Young Adult fiction as a separate category confuses matters further since it overlaps each of the other genres.) However you crunch the numbers though, the mystery/detective/thriller genre is high on the list as it has been for the better part of two centuries. It is high on my list as well. My own taste in mysteries includes classic noir-ish fare from the likes of Raymond Chandler, darker fare from the likes of Jeff Lindsay (the Dexter novels), and crossover historical-mysteries from the likes of Lindsey Davis (the Falco stories set in ancient Rome). Then there is Boris Akunin, whose novel Black City I just finished.

Anyone who is a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes but hasn’t met Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin needs to do so now. Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili, who was born in Tbilisi in 1956 but grew up in Moscow after 1958. After university he was not an instant success as a writer, but by the late 1990s his crime fiction had found its audience. His best-known recurring character is the fictional detective Erast Petrovich Fandorin, a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes. (One novella by Akunin is a crossover story featuring both Holmes and Fandorin who find themselves on the same case in France.) There are 15 books (12 in English) featuring the detective Erast Fandorin starting with The Winter Queen set in 1876 when Fandorin is a 20-y.o. clerk in the police department. Black City is the most recent when Fandorin is a 58-y.o. experienced private detective with imperial connections. There might or might not be a 16th book later this year or next year. The Fandorin stories have an underlying ominousness to them since we all know what happens in Russia after July 1914. The events in Black City take place (mostly) in the oil city of Baku in July 1914. All the books are enjoyable detective fiction, but for anyone new to the series I’d recommend both The Winter Queen and Black City (English translation published 2018), which bookend Fandorin’s career and personal life nicely.

The novel takes us first to Yalta where Fandorin is tricked into exposing the Tsar’s security chief to an assassin. He has reason to believe the plot was the work of a Bolshevik terrorist mastermind known as the Woodpecker. Fandorin, insulted and embarrassed by being used this way, follows a slim lead that the Woodpecker may be in the colorfully diverse oil city of Baku where a strike by petroleum workers is underway that could cripple Russia at time of diplomatic crisis while also possibly triggering wider revolution. As it happens, Fandorin’s actress wife is also in Baku where a movie starring her is being made. The thrill long since has gone from their marriage. Fandorin encounters intrigue, seduction, and betrayal involving ruthless oil magnates, bandits, terrorists, corrupt officials, foreign agents, moviemakers, and revolutionaries. Meantime there is the matter of an incident far away in Sarajevo. Russia without the calamity of World War One and its Revolutionary consequences is one of the great might-have-beens of history, and there seems a chance that Fandorin’s activities might just incidentally prevent the war. Even though we know in advance that they don’t, the reader can’t help hoping somehow they do.

This is a solid entry in the Fandorin series as a mystery novel, as a period piece, and as an adventure tale. Thumbs Up.

Akunin talks briefly about Fandorin