Rating: 3/5
Review:
Not for me
I didn't get on very well with The State Counsellor. It's a novel setting for a crime story and
it's reasonably well done, but it just didn't ever quite engage me, I'm afraid.
Set in late 19th Century Tsarist Russia,
Fandorin is a state security operative who acts rather like an Imperially
appointed Sherlock Holmes. Here he
investigates the murder of a very highly placed official who has received
numerous threats from an anarchist group.
Needless to say, the politics of the situation become very involved, but
Fandorin is the equal of it all.
The setting was pretty well done, as was the sense of
political skulduggery and shifting factions and the story was decent if rather
run-of-the-mill. Somehow, though, this
never took off or involved me much; the characters were all a bit thin, the
plot wasn't really enough to hold my attention and the writing was over-wordy
and often had a stale, almost clichéd feel – possibly due to the translation
rather than the original. Phrases like
"they waited with bated breath", for example, began to get pretty
wearisome after a while.
So, this wasn't for me.
It's not actually bad and others have enjoyed it very much, but I can't
really recommend it.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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