The Amazon review says:
The surviving Nihilists have condemned the Russian General Trebassof to death for the crimes he and his troops committed against the revolution. Three attempts on his life have failed, but the Czar is determined to keep him alive. The Czar assigns the redoubtable, French detective reporter, Rouletabille to the case. It quickly becomes apparent that one of the General's own retinue is in league with the assassins! Why?
Alas, we will probably never know, since wading through this incredibly turgid melodrama is well beyond the powers of anyone not brought up on three-volume novels. Leroux writing about France is merely wordy; Leroux writing about Russia becomes intoxicated with his own verbosity. Here's a sample:
"But the hardest drinker I ever knew was born on the banks of the Seine. Did you know him, Feodor Feodorovitch? Poor Charles Dufour, who died two years ago at fete of the officers of the Guard. He wagered at the end of the banquet that he could drink a glassful of champagne to the health of each man there. There were sixty when you came to count them. He commenced the round of the table and the affair went splendidly up to the fifty-eighth man. But at the fifty-ninth - think of the misfortune! - the champagne ran out! That poor, that charming, that excellent Charles took up a glass of vin dore which was in the glass of this fifty-ninth, wished him long life, drained the glass at one draught, had just time to murmur, 'Tokay, 1807,' and fell back dead! Ah, he knew the brands, my word! and he proved it to his last breath! Peace to his ashes! They asked what he died of. I knew he died because of the inappropriate blend of flavors. There should be discipline in all things and not promiscuous mixing. One more glass of champagne and he would have been drinking with us this evening. Your health, Matrena Petrovna. Champagne, Feodor Feodorovitch! Vive la France, monsieur! Natacha, my child, you must sing something. Boris will accompany you on the guzla. Your father will enjoy it."
Is this a clue? No, padding, page after page of it, laden with Russian 'atmosphere' by the bucketful -- Nihilists, student revolutionaries, devoted retainers, vodka, secret police, glum peasants, bloody pogroms, balalaikas, voluble crones and histrionics on all sides. Rouletabille is soon lost in a welter of familial complications that seems as long as War and Peace. A third of the way through I started to skim. Two-thirds of the way through I gave up altogether. The identity of the traitor will have to remain shrouded in impenetrable mystery. A real clunker.
Jon.
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