cover image The Gentle Axe

The Gentle Axe

R. N. Morris, . . Penguin Press, $24.95 (305pp) ISBN 978-1-59420-112-7

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