A Vengeful Longing (Unabridged)

In the steaming St.Petersberg summer of 1868, a doctor's wife and retarded son die a hideous death by poisoning. The doctor is the prime suspect of Investigating Magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich, who discovers that the poison was contained in the special chocolates that the doctor brought home for his wife every week. Very shortly afterwards, a man is stabbed and left to die on the street, and an army colonel is shot to death in his own home. Despite there being at first, no obvious connection beteen the three events, Porfiry is convinced that there is a definite link which connects them all and, with his new assitant, Virginsky, travels all over the city, interviewing anyone who had anything at all to do with any of the victims. His travels take him to unbelievably appalling slums which make those of Dickens's London seem like palaces..I've never read worse! The conditions under which the poorest of the peasant classes live defy description so that the reader may see the roots of the Russian revolution forming. I cannot say that it was a particularly enjoyable read but it was certainly a well written account of murder and abject poverty,