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lisa_mc's review against another edition
4.0
A great follow-up to "The Gentle Axe," this novel finds Porfiry Petrovich and his assistant Virginsky -- the starving student from the previous book -- juggling three seemingly unrelated murder cases. We know better, and Porfiry ultimately unearths the connection among them all. St. Petersburg again springs to life, this time in the stagnant, sweltering summer, when the fetid canals make the weather even more unbearable. The story is richly detailed and well plotted, though the ending comes together a little hastily compared with the sometimes languorous pacing of the first three-quarters of the book. But the clues -- and the killer -- are in the story from early on. A satisfying, well-done period mystery.
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