Moscow, May 1876: What would cause a talented young student from a wealthy family to shoot himself in front of a promenading public in the Alexander Gardens? Decadence and boredom, most likely, is what the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Police thinks, but still he finds it curious enough to send the newest member of the division, Erast Fandorin, a young man of irresistible charm, to the Alexander Gardens precinct for...

In 1878 Paris, Police Commissioner "Papa" Gauche must solve a brutal murder. Lord Littleby has been found at home with his head bashed in, surrounded by the bodies of seven servants and two children who all seem to have died from morphine poisoning. The only clue Gauche has to go on is a gold key in the shape of a whale. This key gains entrance to a luxury liner, the Leviathan, whose maiden voyage is to India. Gauche embarks, and finds among the passengers--all...

In Special Assignments, Erast Fandorin, nineteenth-century Russia’s 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 Moscow’s residents–including Fandorin’s own boss, Prince Dolgorukoi. To catch him, Fandorin and his new assistant, timid young policeman Anisii Tulipov,...

After five years spent abroad building up a business as something of a private investigator, the handsome, stuttering Fandorin is back in Moscow, and in for a case which entangles him with the highest echelons of Romanov royalty. Grand Duke Georgii Alexandrovich arrives in Moscow with three of his children for the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, fated to become the last Emperor of Russia. During an afternoon stroll in the park Georgii's daughter Xenia...