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**The acclaimed author of *The Gentle Axe* returns with another atmospheric thriller starring investigator Porfiry Petrovich** Hailed with glowing reviews , R. N. Morris's *The Gentle Axe* borrowed Porfiry Petrovich of Dostoyevsky's *Crime and Punishment* to create a wholly new, hauntingly authentic novel of suspense. *A Vengeful Longing*, Petrovich's next outing, is even more engrossing. As the laconic investigator follows a trail that begins innocently with a box of chocolates, he is drawn deep into St. Petersburg's squalid heart. Aided by Morris's effortless prose, readers are immersed in the stifling world of nineteenth-century tsarist Russia and treated to an unforgettable rendering of a brutal time and place that will ensnare every fan of sophisticated historical fiction. ** ### From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Set in St. Petersburg in 1868, Morris's superb second novel to feature Porfiry Petrovich (after *The Gentle Axe*) puts the detective borrowed from Dostoyevski's *Crime and Punishment* on the trail of a series of vile murders. When the wife and son of a doctor die after consuming a box of chocolates at their dacha, the obvious suspect is the morphine-addicted doctor. Then a shooting and a stabbing lead Petrovich elsewhere—to an elegant confectioner's full of pastries and possible revolutionaries as well as to the city's underworld. As Petrovich breaks in a new detective, the aptly named Pavel Virginsky, he introduces colleague and reader alike to the Russian capital and to the ills of the entire society. Morris captures this world with expert strokes, never content to merely peddle exotica, but making sure that his characters spring convincingly from their setting. While the person behind the crimes is a little unlikely, this novel stands out from a number of fine czarist-era mysteries—by Russians and foreigners alike—like a Fabergé egg at a yard sale. *(June)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### From Booklist Midsummer in St. Petersburg, 1868. It is hot and oppressive, and the reek of sewage, swarms of flies, and a cholera outbreak have the entire city on edge, even Investigative Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich. But Porfiry has three murder investigations to pursue, and he must train a new assistant, a brash young man he’d previously suspected of murder (The Gentle Axe, 2007). Each murder appears open-and-shut, but the cerebral Porfiry divines a connection and a single devious mind behind the crimes. The Gentle Axe was a solid debut, a reincarnation of Dostoevsky’s character from Crime and Punishment. But here Morris seems to have hit his stride. His characters come alive in all their destitution, pretension, madness, fractiousness, and humanity. His portrait of the city, abandoned by the well-to-do in summer, offers a rich, palpably fetid sense of place, and his depiction of nineteenth-century Russian society, festering with revolutionary notions and old grudges, is compelling. --Thomas Gaughan