Cover 8

Death on the Trans-Siberian Express

Death on the Trans-Siberian Express

2021 • 303 pages

Ratings1

Average rating3

15

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

March 19, 2022Report this review