Praise

“Akunin’s prose is clean and swift, pausing only to set a scene with a few well-chosen details before resuming the hairpin curves of the action. If Pushkin had tried his hand at detective fiction, it might have tuned out something like this.”
—The New York Times

“A galloping story of murder, suicide, deception, and disguise.”
–Entertainment Weekly

“As international as caviar and vodka! A crafty tale full of atmosphere, character, and action.”
–Anne Perry

“Marries old-fashioned manners to a nonstop array of plot twists to rival the best detective tales . . . The Winter Queen is an energetic hands-down winner.”
–People

“There are secret panels, hidden tunnels, a false mustache, intercepted letters, gunfights, and a glamorous female villain. . . . Akunin knows how to build suspense.”
–The Boston Globe

“A wondrous strange and appealing novel . . . Elaborate, intricate, profoundly czarist, and Russian to its bones, as though Tolstoy had sat down to write a murder mystery. Not quite like anything you’ve ever read before.”
–Alan Furst, author of The Foreign Correspondent