A Vengeful Longing by R.N. Morris

 It really is a case of Death By Chocolate at the start of the sequel to R. N. Morris’s elegant page-turner, A Gentle Axe, in which we were re-introduced to the detective Porfiry Petrovich from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. (I say re-introduced, but I have yet to read the novel that inspired this new series, which is highly enjoyable on its own merit.) From the very start it is clear that A Vengeful Longing is going to be as much of a treat as its forbearer, with its taut, self-assured prose and vivid description of two simultaneous, agonising deaths: a doctor’s wife and son.

Petrovich arrests the obvious culprit, his every move questioned by his new protégé (a character we met in the first instalment, who richly deserves this resurrection). But with Petrovich so despondent, we suspect our thoughtful investigator is merely biding his time while St Petersburg struggles in the dusty heat and the stench of raw sewage is no longer confined to the slums.

At the scene of a second murder, the prime suspect is found with the murder weapon in his hands and Petrovich has no choice but to arrest him, too. But his heart is not in it, and before the third murder takes place he has set off on a trail where the only signposts could be either coincidences or connections. Meanwhile, the irascible Lieutenant Salytov pursues a line of enquiry of his own making and in his own hard-hitting style, in contrast to Petrovich’s intellectual approach.

The mystery kept me guessing to the final showdown, though as in A Gentle Axe, when I first encountered the culprit there was a ‘walked over my grave’ feeling that would only click into place later on - but Morris is concerned here with the how and the why, not just the who. And it is in the ‘why’ that we find the richly quotable passages that broaden the novel’s reach from an exciting page-turner to an insightful tale with themes no less relevant to today than to nineteenth-century Russia.

He uses atmosphere to remarkable effect, and there is nothing overindulgent or surplus. There are layers in this novel that come back to haunt you, like a disturbed young boy’s irrepressible habit of copying passages from newspapers, or the ‘jagged sobs’ of a bereaved mother and Petrovich’s humbling visit to the slums, where life has a permanently rotten stench. Throughout the novel we take a headlong look at suffering to discover how relative it can be and how far-reaching can be the consequences of what appears on the surface to be a lesser predicament.

As to our hero, Petrovich, he is enigmatic and cynical but immensely human and as much a part of the city as the victims and villains he comes across. Whatever it was that inspired Morris to resurrect him from Crime and Punishment, he is a character I look forward to meeting again. This was vivid and satisfying read about power, suffering, bitterness and revenge.

Faber and Faber, 2008, paperback, 336 pp., ISBN: 0571232523