A Vengeful Longing

Morris does it again

R.N. Morris continues to captivate Dostoyevsky's Detective Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich 'Crime and Punishment' career in St. Peterburg. In the 'Gentle Ax' I was amazed Morris pulled it off without ruining the original incarnation. To pull it off, as Morris has in 'A Vengeful Longing', is simply astounding. Morris doesn't just tell us another story about Petrovich. He builds on him. After reading Morris' take on Petrovich, it was immense fun to reread 'Crime and Punishment'

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Vengeful Longing

It was with trepidation that I started on R. N. Morris' book. After all, his hero is borrowed from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment, which I endured with gritted teeth as a literature undergraduate. But Morris' take on investigating magistrate Porfiry Petrovich is surprisingly readable, and his portrait of the seedier side of 1860s St Petersburg, sweltering in the heat of summer, is rather entertaining. Petrovich, the dogged antagonist to Dostoyevsky's angsty protagonist Raskolnikov, is drolly weary here. Exasperated by poor sanitation in the city, tormented by his haemorrhoids and smoking endless cigarettes, he is hot on the trail of two seemingly open-and-shut cases. A suburban wife and her handicapped son die horribly after ingesting poisoned chocolates and a philandering soldier is shot dead by, apparently, an avenging father. The fun here is not so much thw whodunnit but the colourful cast of characters and the vivid vignettes of a Tsarist city conjured by Morris. In fact, hardcore murder mystery fans might be a tad exasperated by the ambling pace of the investigation. But for readers looking for a literary jaunt with better than average style and sass, this detour delivers a fairly scenic route.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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