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Dmitri Kameron #2
Dmitri and the One-legged Lady by Michael Pearce
A fery nice copy. 2nd in series.
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
19 people want to read
About the author
Michael Pearce
92 books52 followersMichael Pearce grew up in the (then) Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He returned there later to teach, and retains a human rights interest in the area. He retired from his academic post to write full time.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 18, 2023
Tsarist Russia and rising young lawyer, Dmitri, must investigate the disappearance of the One-Legged Lady. Infuriating bureaucracy, mysterious monks, bumbling clerks and do-gooder nobility, a typical Michael Pearce romp.
August 8, 2021
Excruciatingly bad for such a short book. There are no descriptions, other than a repetitive strain of 'a stream of peasants going into the monastery'. Seriously. There are 2 (3?) monasteries and 2 (3?) small towns and I couldn't tell any of them apart. The same for characters. I started muddling up 'the carpenter' and 'the carter', the two coach drivers, the two Starostas from the different towns.
The characters are barely differentiated. This gets worse in dialogue - there are entire scenes where I didn't know somebody was present in the exchange until the end of the scene. The author seems to like you to figure out 'who-said-what' yourself, but frankly, a few attributions would've helped.
I read a lot and I usually have no problem sifting through large casts of characters (like Game of Thrones); this was just frustratingly written. Think long pages of interjections with no helpful 'x-character said'. It's okay in two-person dialogue, but with random interjections from a third character, it becomes hard work. And the story isn't good enough to be *worth* hard work. The mystery... isn't mysterious. The adventure falls flat. It's an exercise in 'nothing happens'.
Most of the narrative involves ferrying Dmitri back and forwards between the aforementioned identical monasteries to interview identical priests with identical questions. You could lose your place in this book and not notice, it's so dull and repetitive.
Why 2 stars then? Mr. Pearce earns them for insightful observations on 19th century Russian culture. There are a handful of paragraphs where he explains the politics and the relationship between religion, society, and the law in Tsarist Russia that I found interesting.
I'd attend a lecture by him; he seems knowledgeable. Shame this book was such a misadventure.
The characters are barely differentiated. This gets worse in dialogue - there are entire scenes where I didn't know somebody was present in the exchange until the end of the scene. The author seems to like you to figure out 'who-said-what' yourself, but frankly, a few attributions would've helped.
I read a lot and I usually have no problem sifting through large casts of characters (like Game of Thrones); this was just frustratingly written. Think long pages of interjections with no helpful 'x-character said'. It's okay in two-person dialogue, but with random interjections from a third character, it becomes hard work. And the story isn't good enough to be *worth* hard work. The mystery... isn't mysterious. The adventure falls flat. It's an exercise in 'nothing happens'.
Most of the narrative involves ferrying Dmitri back and forwards between the aforementioned identical monasteries to interview identical priests with identical questions. You could lose your place in this book and not notice, it's so dull and repetitive.
Why 2 stars then? Mr. Pearce earns them for insightful observations on 19th century Russian culture. There are a handful of paragraphs where he explains the politics and the relationship between religion, society, and the law in Tsarist Russia that I found interesting.
I'd attend a lecture by him; he seems knowledgeable. Shame this book was such a misadventure.
August 8, 2018
The Tsar is still ruling but Bolshevism is on it's way. Life is changing in the countryside but the villagers still cling to the old religious ways. When the icon of the One-Legged lady goes missing and famine comes to visit, Kameron has to find her. There are plenty of candidates and vodka, pilgrims and the starving to deal with. It's hard enough to find a sleigh to use for his investigations without unravelling which of the local monks would have had a hand in it, or all the parcels he has to deliver to the outlaying villages for distribution among the starving.
May 15, 2022
A short book and thank goodness for that, I found it confusing, a little repetitive, and very little in character forming. Not an author I will return to quickly!
Some humorous one liners scattered throughout
Some humorous one liners scattered throughout
December 11, 2017
More like 3,5 :)
November 19, 2019
A rather strange book, entertaining though.
February 23, 2021
Not as good as the Mamur Zapt series but still enjoyable
August 30, 2012
Originally posted on my blog here in September 2000.
The second Dmitri Kameron novel is an investigation into the theft of an icon, depicting the one-legged lady, who dedicated her life to charity after the accident which removed her limb. Like the crime in Dmitri and the Milk Drinkers, there are political overtones to the theft - the one-legged lady is particularly associated with relief from famine, and a harvest failure in the region that she originally came from has led to food riots which have attracted the attention of higher authority. Before she had been removed to a monastery near the town where Kameron practices as a lawyer, the response to the famine would have been to carry her in a procession, but this is not possible since she has been moved; ill feeling about this contributes to the general unrest.
Continuing the direction set in the first novel, Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady is enjoyable and funny, with many quick jokes reminiscent of Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon.
The second Dmitri Kameron novel is an investigation into the theft of an icon, depicting the one-legged lady, who dedicated her life to charity after the accident which removed her limb. Like the crime in Dmitri and the Milk Drinkers, there are political overtones to the theft - the one-legged lady is particularly associated with relief from famine, and a harvest failure in the region that she originally came from has led to food riots which have attracted the attention of higher authority. Before she had been removed to a monastery near the town where Kameron practices as a lawyer, the response to the famine would have been to carry her in a procession, but this is not possible since she has been moved; ill feeling about this contributes to the general unrest.
Continuing the direction set in the first novel, Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady is enjoyable and funny, with many quick jokes reminiscent of Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon.
June 21, 2009
Nyh. I liked the first one better, from a story point of view, but I'm still enjoying the history lesson. Sort of. The writing style is a bit odd; my Russian-speaking husband says it reads like a translation, which it isn't, but it is strangely choppy. The author, who is one of those Englishmen-raised-abroad (Sudan), and has worked as a Russian interpreter, does seem to have a handle on the Russian Character - at least, his characters tend to behave in the same rather loopy way that Chekhov's do, as though there was a total disconnection between their brains and their emotions... Hard to fathom, hard to empathize with.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews