A Gentle Axe: A St Petersburg Mystery

Description

What became of the shrewd police detective who harried and trapped the double-axe-murderer Rodion Raskolnikov? In A GENTLE AXE, the inquiries of Porfiry Petrovich continue, through a richly textured historical crime novel that explores the darkest reserves of the Russian soul It is St Petersburg in the winter of 1866. Two frozen bodies are found in an isolated corner of Petrovsky Park. The first - that of a dwarf - has been packed neatly in a suitcase, a deep wound splitting his skull in two. The second body, of a burly peasant, is hanging from a nearby tree, bloody axe tucked into his belt. Porfiry's investigation leads him from the squalid tenements, brothels and drinking dens of the city's Haymarket district to an altogether more genteel stratum of society, in a thriller that is mospheric and tense from its dramatic opening to its shocking climax. ISBN:9780571232055