The Gentle Axe: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Amazon.com Review

Porfiry Petrovich, the police investigator who worked on the case involving the deranged student Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, is given another life in R.N. Morris's The Gentle Axe. It is 1867 in St. Petersburg, Russia, on a cold winter morning. An elderly woman is scouring Petrovsky Park in search of a few sticks of firewood. What she finds instead is horrifying: a big, burly peasant hanging by a rope from a tree, with a blood-covered axe tucked into his belt. Nearby, she finds a suitcase. Packed inside is the body of a dwarf, with a deep head wound caused by an axe. Conventional wisdom says that the peasant killed the dwarf and then, in a paroxysm of guilt and remorse, killed himself. That scenario is good enough for everyone but Porfiry.

In a wonderfully atmospheric novel, Morris has created a world-weary protagonist in Porfiry, a man still exhausted from his last case, joined by a collection of absolutely believable characters to flesh out the novel. Mysteries abound and multiply in layers of characterization and narrative. Porfiry's investigation goes on, despite repeated attempts to take him off the case, and it leads him from the dregs of society to its most genteel heights. He follows clues, hunches, people, and stories to get to the bottom of the mystery--and when he does, it comes as a complete surprise, but one that makes perfect sense. This carefully written and entertaining novel will satisfy lovers of mystery, historical crime, and just plain good novels. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

British author Morris deserves credit for a clever premise—using the deceptively stolid Porfiry Petrovich, the detective in Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment (who helped inspire TV's Lieutenant Columbo), as the central focus of a period whodunit. A year and a half after the events of Crime and Punishment, two men turn up dead in St. Petersburg's Petrovsky Park. Petrovich, a senior member of the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes, quickly suspects that the official version of the tragedy—that one of the men killed the other and then took his own life—is mistaken. In the face of opposition from his superiors, the sleuth doggedly pursues clues that lead him to an underworld of brothels and pornographers. Unfortunately, this Petrovich doesn't have that distinctive a personality and the plot doesn't offer much complexity or psychological depth. Still, the author does a good job of depicting Russian society in the 1860s. (Mar.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (March 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201129
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201127
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #438,993 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, March 30, 2007

By	Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Here, there and everywhere) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

nothing is more difficult than to understand him. Fyodor Dostoevsky.

It takes audacity for an author to choose a great novel or a well-known protagonist from another author's work as the starting off point for his own work. It takes an even greater amount of talent to pull it off. Many have tried and many have failed. There have been some notable successes, however. Jon Clinch's new novel, "Finn", which took a character from Mark Twain's Huck Finn is one. R.N. Morris' novel "The Gentle Axe" is another. He has taken St. Petersburg, Russia's police magistrate Porfiry Petrovich from the pages of Fyodor Dostoevsky's magnificent "Crime and Punishment" and placed him in charge of a new criminal investigation . "The Gentle Axe" manages to be an entertaining novel on its own while doing no disservice to the memory of one of the great novels of all time.

The story starts off with, no surprise here, dead bodies. An aging, former St. Petersburg prostitute finds two bodies in a snow-covered St. Petersburg park; a dwarf who has been hacked to death and stuffed into a suitcase and another man, a peasant, hanging from a nearby tree. Although Magistrate Petrovich suspects that this is a double-homicide his `superiors' are determined to consider this a murder-suicide and close the investigation. But, Petrovich plods on and what seemed at first blush to be a simple plot turns out to be a complicated look into St. Petersburg's `heart of darkness'. Petrovich's investigation takes him to a world of brothels, child pornographers, and poverty-stricken university students who have little food and less clothing but who are rich in nihilism and despair. It is one such student, Pavel Virginisky who capture Petrovich's imagination, a student whose every movement and whose every word invokes in Petrovich the memory of Raskolnikov whose confession he obtained in Crime and Punishment. The conversations between Petrovich and Virginsky form the emotional core of the book.

I very much enjoyed "The Gentle Axe". It has been almost thirty years since I've read "Crime and Punishment" so I cannot state with any certainty whether or not Morris has captured Petrovich's essence (or whether he tried to do so). However, Morris' Petrovich is well-drawn and with an appropriately dark Russian soul even if taken as a stand-alone character. The plot moves along very nicely. Morris has a nice descriptive touch and his portrayal of life amongst the demimonde in 19th-century St. Petersburg feels as if it is very accurate. The dialogue is sharp even if Petrovich and some of the other characters seem a bit florid and prone to excessive word play at times. I particularly liked the portrayal of the medical examiner whose sarcasm and mordant observations would serve him well in even the most modern crime lab. The only (mild) criticism for me came as the booked reached its conclusion. In many books of this genre there is a great revelatory moment where all the loose ends are tied up. In this instance I felt there was a lot revealed in very short order. It did appear to me to a bit too rushed. Again, this is a minor criticism.

As far as comparisons go, I think "The Gentle Axe" will likely be compared with some regularity to Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series. That is actually a compliment to both authors even though there are some major differences between the two. I'd say that Akunin focuses more on the adventure with the psyche of Fandorin playing an important but secondary role, where Morris has focused more on the internal lives of the characters with the action playing an important but secondary role.

Last, Morris concludes his acknowledgments by stating: "[a]nd to Fyodor Dostoevsky, I can only apologize". I got the impression that this was Morris' tongue-in-cheek way of saying thanks for the character Fyodor and, by the way, I'm not trying to write a new "Crime and Punishment", just an entertaining novel. In that, Morris has succeeded very well. 4.5 Stars. L. Fleisig

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modern Day Masterpiece, April 3, 2008

By	RJ "Book-Lover" (TN, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gentle Axe: A Novel (Hardcover)

For readers that have been yearning for a book that speaks with an older, wiser voice, written in a long forgotten style, with a classic fluidity that can only be penned by a select few...Here ya' go! R. N. Morris has delivered a novel that embraces the historic elements of a true masterpiece, indulges the nostalgic desires of the quintessential reader and satisfies even the most discerning contemporary suspense-thriller lover!

Fyodor Dostoevsky first introduced readers to criminal investigator Porfiry Petrovich, in the 1866 novel Crime & Punishment. The book is centered around the murder of a pawnbroker and her half-sister by a deranged, impoverished student, named Raskolnikov. It is a year after this mind-numbing case that Morris picks up the story and takes the reader deep into the investigator's life and of course, a brand new murder mystery.

Searching for firewood in St. Petersburg's Petrovsky Park, a woman stumbles upon a dead body hanging from a tree. Nearby, a second body, that of a dwarf, is found in a suitcase. A laundry list of items were initially left at the scene, however, by the time investigator Petrovich is alerted, via an anonymous tip, anything of value is missing, thus complicating an already difficult case.

The search for answers will take the rotund detective through many facets of Russian society, from the dark, dank squalid apartments of the slums to the elegant, sprawling homes of the sophisticated elite. As the Park investigation continues, other, seemingly unrelated murders occur, forcing the investigation in a surprisingly new direction. To solve the Park case, Petrovich will have to think outside the box...connecting the dots of this disturbing case will prove to be even more difficult than the case that had defined him.

Morris unravels the layers of St. Petersburg and its residents, slowly, like a delicious, blooming onion, allowing the reader to savor the flavor and enjoy each and every bite. There are strong, no-non-sense characters and those that bring a lighter, at times, humorous element to the story, thus eliciting a myriad of emotions from the reader. Gentle Axe is not littered with red herrings and preemptive spoilers, instead it is based on a clever plot, written with artistic flair. The characters are drawn with the kind of intimate detail one ascertains from a photograph and the settings are constructed with the artistic eye of a painter. The author took a significant, yet calculated risk- borrowing the lead character, setting and back story from the famous work of a beloved writer, which could easily garner a host of negativity. However, creating a sequel that feels Dostoevsky-like, that reads like a Morris novel is a note-worthy accomplishment, indeed!

A spell-binding novel that will definitely keep you up late...reading! And you'll want to share this one with friends and coworkers -it's really that good!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jovial, page-turning Russian moroseness, April 3, 2008

By	24mark "24mark" (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gentle Axe (Paperback)

I adored this novel, and I'm so pleased that there will be a sequel with the same protagonist. Morris provides good plot, great atmosphere, and characters that are several levels above those found in most novels labeled as mysteries. Rather than skim over paragraphs about walking through the streets or climbing staircases, I found myself rapt in the small bits of characterization and setting that Morris includes in such passages. This is a great find for lovers of historical crime.