Pelagia & The Black Monk
The Sunday Age
Sunday August 5, 2007
Pelagia & The Black Monk
Boris Akunin Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $35The first nun-detective was probably Mother Paul, by Australian June Wright. This literary device allows for a female professionalism, while avoiding all romance (except with God). Russian author Boris Akunin has no doubt never heard of Mother Paul, but his heroine, Sister Pelagia, is equally inquisitive. Like Miss Marple, Pelagia knits, but is younger and an adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church - a background as vivid as an icon. In this second book of the series, set in Imperial Russia, a frightened monk flees to Bishop Mitrofanii with news of a haunting. Saint Basilisk has apparently returned from the dead, and is walking a hermitage lake, with dire warnings. One after another, as in a Russian folktale, emissaries are sent to investigate, the lucky last being Pelagia. Her predecessors have either been killed or gone mad, but the lady is made of sterner stuff. Akunin's Erast Fandorin series deliberately and allusively mines detective genres, and this book nods to the scientific detective. The book, which also draws on Russian classics, is intelligent and playful, mixing high seriousness with the occasional silliness.
© 2007 The Sunday Age