Close up and far away

It’s difficult to keep a crime series going after 11 books but Boris Akunin manages it well in All the World’s a Stage (Weidenfeld, £20). His hero, Erast Fandorin, is now in his fifties. It’s 1911 in Russia, and while the Bolsheviks gather their power, another revolution is taking place in the theatre, and the Noah’s Ark Company are at the forefront of this new expression. When their star actress Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine’s life is threatened during a performance, Fandorin is called in to investigate. He’s working undercover as, of all things, the writer of their
next production.

This is a traditional crime drama in which members of the company are killed off one by one in ever more mysterious circumstances. The actors merge with their on-stage characters, and this adds another layer to the levels of deceit on offer. There are two different suspects, and both possibilities are fully explored, their contrasting plots wrapping around each other to form the complex thread of the book’s narrative.