A Vengeful Longing

St Petersburg Mysteries Series - Book Two

"Right from the start, we are hooked by his storytelling panache." Daily Express

"Satisfies on more than one level - as a story of investigation but also as a historical novel crammed with sharply individual characters." Andrew Taylor

It is the middle of a hot, dusty St Petersburg summer in the late 1860s.

A doctor brings home a fancy box of chocolates for his wife and son - a strange gift on a scorching Saturday afternoon.

Within an hour, both mother and child die in excruciating pain.

The doctor is arrested, suspected of poisoning. As investigator Porfiry Petrovich concedes, in such cases the obvious solution often turns out to be the correct one. And in the city's sweltering, oppressive atmosphere, even he lacks the energy to look any deeper.

But when further, apparently unconnected, murders occur, a subtle and surprising pattern starts to emerge.

Porfiry is forced to reassess his assumptions and follow a tenuous, uncertain trail, encountering aristocrats, soldiers, lunatics, bureaucrats and courtesans.

His investigation takes him into the hidden, squalid heart of the city, bringing him face to face with incomprehensible horror and cruelty.

A Vengeful Longing is a taut, enthralling crime mystery, a vivid and utterly unforgettable rendering of a brutal and stifling nineteenth century St Petersburg.

Recommended for fans of Andrew Taylor, CJ Sansom and Boris Akunin.

R. N. Morris is the author of the Porfiry Petrovich series of historical crime novels, featuring the investigating magistrate from Dostoevsky's masterpiece Crime and Punishment. He has also written six novels set in London in 1914: Summon Up The Blood, The Mannequin House, A Dark Palace, The White Feather Killer and The Music Box Enigma. His latest novel is Fortune's Hand, a novel about Walter Raleigh.

Praise for Roger Morris:

"An extraordinary excursion into the past by a master storyteller. I have never read a book quite like it, nor admired a book so much." Michael Gregorio

"Morris' recreation of the seamy side of 19th-century St Petersburg is vivid and convincing ... As to who did it, Morris keeps the reader guessing until the end." The Independent

"Morris has created an atmospheric St Petersburg, and a stylish set of intellectual problems, but what makes A Gentle Axe such an effective debut is its fascination with good and evil." Times Literary Supplement

"As fans of Morris's previous A Gentle Axe will know, this author not only has the nerve to lift his lead character from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment but also the skill to bring that distant Russia and its inhabitants to life, while drawing parallels with our own world." The Guardian

"The streets of St Petersburg are vividly portrayed as the author shows the imperial Russian capital on the brink of upheaval... If you like historical crime novels, you will enjoy this." Historical Novels Review

"Morris's descriptions of the horrors of insanitary slum dwellings in St Petersburg are extraordinarily vivid, but the most striking feature of the novel is the way in which Porfiry's sophisticated understanding of human nature compensates for the limited investigatory tools at his disposal." The Times

"... a book that satisfies on more than one level - as a story of investigation and also as a historical novel crammed with sharply individualised characters." Andrew Taylor in the Spectator