Death of a Princess is the latest book in my Empire of Shadows series featuring the investigating magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky, who first made an appearance in my 2007 novel A Gentle Axe. The protagonist of that book was Porfiry Petrovich, the investigator in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment. Back then, Virginsky was an impoverished law student (and suspect in a murder investigation). Spoiler alert: in my fictional universe, he goes on to become Porfiry’s right hand man, so I guess he didn’t dunnit.
When I wrote Law of Blood, the first book in the current series, I decided to put Virginsky centre stage and make him the detective in his own set of adventures. Now retired, Porfiry took on the role of a mentor offering advice from time to time.
Death of a Princess is the first of my Russian-set books that doesn’t have St Petersburg as a backdrop. Instead, the setting is the provincial spa town of Lipetsk, 700 miles or so to the south. Why Lipetsk? I was inspired by reading about a secret congress of terrorists that took place there in 1879, a year before the action of the novel.
A group of 11 radicals (ten men and one exceptionally beautiful woman) came to Lipetsk from all over Russia, ostensibly to take the waters and soak in the town’s famous health-giving mud. But their real purpose was to establish a new political movement – The People’s Will. They had grown impatient with the Land and Reform party, which opposed the tsarist regime of Alexander II through largely peaceful means.
The Lipetsk group believed it was time for a new political strategy. One based on violence and terror.
Of course, they were few in number and up against the might of the vast Russian Empire. But they had a new weapon with which they could wreak untold destruction. Dynamite.
In February 1880, the year Death of a Princess is set, the terrorists managed to place explosives inside the Winter Palace itself. The blast was a shocking blow to the tsar’s security services. But Alexander and his family survived, though eleven palace guards lost their lives.
Using these historical events as a springboard, I imagined an entirely fictitious group of terrorists visiting Lipetsk on a secret mission. As well as being a spa town, Lipetsk is also an important industrial centre. The ironworks there was founded by Peter the Great himself. The iron it produces is vital to the military-industrial complex that powered the empire. Given the difficulties the People’s Will were having in killing the tsar (not through want of trying), it didn’t seem too much of a stretch that they might turn their sights on a different target.
Enter Virginsky, burnt out and depressed. He’s in Lipetsk to receive treatment following a nervous breakdown. The last thing he wants is get involved in a dangerous and demanding investigation. But circumstances conspire to draw him in…
Death of a Princess is published by Sharpe Books.
