Customer Reviews

Pelagia and the Red Rooster

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This has to be the best Akunin book. The story oscillates between Russia and hot and dusty Palestine. We meet all sorts of characters, each so finely hewn and thought-about by this immensely talented writer. Soviet Russia's atheism has mellowed into a spectacular secularist that is Akunin and it is quite evident in the story. Among my best reads of 2009!!!

While I am a huge fan of Boris Akunin, I much prefer his Erast Fandorin character to Sister Pelegia. Think of the difference between the two as Hercule Periot and Miss Marple - both are top-notch sleuths, but the personalities (and methods) differ tremendously. So too here. Having followed Sister Pelegia in the White Bulldog and the Black Monk, I naturally had to read The Red Rooster, if only to tide me over for the next Fandorin mystery to be translated.

Certainly there is much to like here. Pelegia is a charming character, her religious innocense again serving her well as those around her consistently underestimate her based on her gender as well as avocation. Yet this mystery is the bloodiest and most disturbing of the Pelegia trilogy. The story opens with a murder on a riverboat - the victim a religious leader of a sect of Christians who have converted to Judiasm and are on pilgrimage to Ottoman-controlled Palestine - an act that hardly wins them friends in rural, Orthodox Russia. As the mystery unfolds, the question of the leader of the sect comes into question: is he truly a holy man, capable of miracles and touched by God, or is he merely a swindler and con-artist? Pelegia decides to make the pilgrimage to find out.

Along the way a number of other murders take place, in addition to a few near-misses for Pelegia. We also see a budding love-interest with Pelegia - the first revelation that she really is a flesh-and-blood woman beneath her habit, and an interesting plot development. The story's ending, however was a bit of a let-down. Not wanting to spoil the story, I'll simply say it was rather open-ended, and reference Doestoyevski (as does Akunin): "The true realist, if he is a non-believer, will always discover within himself the strength and ability not to believe even a miracle ..."

Fans of the Pelegia stories will certainly enjoy it, and Akunin again demonstrates his craft as a writer. The story for me, though, was a let down - call me a "realist."

This is the last of the Sister Pelagia books. Fans of the first two will surely enjoy this one, because our favorite 19th-century Orthodox nun is in the foreground again. But this one is different as well. Some readers will not be comfortable with the book's acceptance of miracles (or magic, if you're not religiously inclined) as real, nor will the reasons for Pelagia's choices be apparent to everyone. But the plot and characterizations are above even Akunin's usually high standards, and fans of the series should not miss this conclusion.