The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense

by Otto Penzler (Editor)

Overview

Many of the greatest Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin, produced crime and mystery fiction, a type of literature that was largely suppressed during theSoviet era because it did not glorify the state but, instead, gaveindividual characters the significance that the U.S.S.R. despised.With the fall of the Soviet Union, mystery writers have becomesome of the most successful novelists in Russia, and there is arenewed interest in, and appreciation of, the great crime classicsof an earlier era. There have been few policemen, and virtually no private detectives or amateur sleuths, in Russian history worthy of approbation, and in consequence its literature is dramatically differentfrom its Western counterparts. Criminals in Mother Russia tend tobe caught or punished by their own consciences or by ghosts, andthe notion of a criminal trial as we know it is utterly alien. Nonetheless, the enormous talent and passion of Russian authors haslong been justly acclaimed, and the rare forays they made into theloosely defined genre of mystery fiction rank among the world'sclassics. This volume is the first collection ever devoted entirely toRussian crime fiction. Among the esteemed contributors are Anton Chekhov, FyodorDostoevsky, Nicolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov, VilLipitov, Alexander Pushkin, Lev Sheinen, Boris Sokoloff and LeoTolstoy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639361014
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/15/2021
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He is the founder of the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books and has received an Edgar Award, an Ellery Queen Award, and a Raven Award for his contribution to the mystery field. His anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps was a New York Times Bestseller.

What People are Saying About This

Robert B. Parker

Otto Penzler knows more about crime fiction than most people know about anything.

Editorial Reviews

Otto Penzler knows more about crime fiction than most people know about anything.--Robert B. Parker

Penzler knows that anthologies are like a party: You meet peopleyou already know and people who are completely new to you.

From the Publisher

Otto Penzler knows more about crime fiction than most people know about anything.

Robert B. Parker

Penzler knows that anthologies are like a party: You meet people you already know and people who are completely new to you.

|Los Angeles Times

Penzler knows that anthologies are like a party: You meet people you already know and people who are completely new to you.

Los Angeles Times

Nineteen reprints with one foot on earth and the other elsewhere.

One of the two biggest surprises here is how generously veteran anthologist Penzler defines the genre: Would anyone else call "The Portrait," Nikolai Gogol's allegory of a spooky painting's power to change lives, or "The Gentleman from San Francisco," Ivan Bunin's massively sarcastic meditation on mortality, crime stories? The other is how readily and rewardingly Russian tales of crime turn transcendental. "Sleepy," Anton Chekhov's sympathetic evocation of a baby-killer, is as earthbound as "Table Talk, 1888," Boris Akunin's morsel of armchair detection, P. Nikitin's surprisingly idiomatic Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Strangler," Lev Sheinen's Arctic expansion of the locked-room formula in "The Hunting Knife" or Vladimir Nabokov's macabre resolution of domestic difficulties in "Revenge." But Maxim Gorky's portrait of a compulsive killer in "A Strange Murderer" and the showdown between detective and his quarry in Vil Lipatov's "Genka Paltsev, Son of Dimitri" already suggest a metaphysical dimension that blossoms into full strength in Alexander Pushkin's spectral fairy tale "The Queen of Spades," Gogol's peerless tragicomedy "The Overcoat" and a pair of tales—Leo Tolstoy's "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" and Chekhov's "The Bet"—about the casting-off of earthly shackles. Strangest of all is Boris Sokoloff's "The Crime of Dr. Garine," whose investigation into a physician's murder of his much-loved wife ends even more mysteriously than it began.

An entertaining collection of stories. Readers with no taste for the uncanny can enjoy two tart anecdotes about capital punishment—Tolstoy's "Too Dear" and Chekhov's "The Head Gardner's Story"—and Chekhov's deft and amusing whodunit, "The Swedish Match."

Kirkus Reviews