The Winter Queen

The Winter Queen - Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield

Not bad, but just not for me. 

 

I'm not keen on pastiche and this was very ... unoriginal. It felt like a story cobbled together with bits and pieces of other books: Sherlock Holmes, Conrad's The Secret Agent, some Chekhov...and possibly some early James Bond.

 

The writing was consistently good and there was certainly lots of fun to be had and lots of atmosphere to be enjoyed, but I just couldn't get excited about the story or the characters.