Death on the Trans-Siberian Express

This book has been unfortunately horribly mismarketed. The title and artwork suggest an Agatha Christie style murder mystery in Russia. Whilst this is a crime novel, it really isn't anything like a Christie style murder mystery. For one thing, the cast are not really contained enough to be a proper whodunnit.

The main issue with this story is the main character (Olga) really quite annoying. I get the impression that Farrington has been repeatedly told to ‘write what you know' and has ended up writing about someone who wants to write a book. This is a bad take - the trope has been overdone and is utterly unrelatable for most non-authors. This has ended up with a messy construct of a Russian Railway worker wanting to write a book and coming up with a completely dire idea with random faux-wisdom about using learnings from the railways as a life improvement handbook. Olga is also rather simply constructed - there is no real emotional nuance to her leaving a pretty flat character

Beyond these peeves is a nice enough crime story, hinting at some of the corruption endemic to the Russian state. Here politicians and crime lords intertwine in an all too believable setup