A Vengeful Longing: A St Petersburg Mystery - Couverture rigide

The acclaimed author of The Gentle Axe returns with another atmospheric thriller starring investigator Porfiry Petrovich

Hailed with glowing reviews , R. N. Morris's The Gentle Axe borrowed Porfiry Petrovich of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment to create a wholly new, hauntingly authentic novel of suspense. A Vengeful Longing, Petrovich's next outing, is even more engrossing. As the laconic investigator follows a trail that begins innocently with a box of chocolates, he is drawn deep into St. Petersburg's squalid heart. Aided by Morris's effortless prose, readers are immersed in the stifling world of nineteenth-century tsarist Russia and treated to an unforgettable rendering of a brutal time and place that will ensnare every fan of sophisticated historical fiction.

It's the middle of a hot, dusty St Petersburg summer in the late 1860s. A doctor's wife and son die suddenly and the doctor is arrested, suspected of poisoning. But when further, apparently unconnected, murders occur, Porfiry Petrovich is forced to reassess his assumptions. Delving into the hidden, squalid heart of the city, he is brought face to face with incomprehensible horror and cruelty, in this vivid rendering of a brutal and stifling nineteenth-century St Petersburg.