Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Summary and Reviews of A Vengeful Longing by R. Morris

A Vengeful Longing by R. N. Morris

A Vengeful Longing

A Novel

by R. N. Morris
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 12, 2008, 336 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2009, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Following in the footsteps of the highly acclaimed novel The Gentle Axe, featuring the detective Porfiry Petrovich in another atmospheric and gripping slice of nineteenth-century Russia

It’s 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 an excruciating death, and the doctor is immediately arrested, suspected of poisoning. As investigator Porfiry Petrovich concedes, in such cases the obvious solution often turns out to be the correct solution. And in the city’s sweltering, oppressive atmosphere, even he lacks the energy to delve any deeper.

But when additional, apparently unconnected, murders occur on the other side of town, a subtle and surprising pattern starts to emerge. Porfiry is forced to reassess his assumptions and follow a tenuous, uncertain trail that takes him into the hidden, squalid heart of the city and brings him face to face with incomprehensible horror and cruelty.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

While characterization is a commanding aspect of Morris's book the author is equally adept at grounding the story with a powerful sense of place and time. He depicts the political atmosphere of mid 19th century Imperial Russia using a light, almost painterly, hand. Subtle hints to the era's diverse attitudes toward the Tsar and government in general lie buried within the dialog. More explicit descriptions of the sweltering summer heat plus lengthier passages portraying the unspeakably bleak living conditions of the very poor who suffered the brunt of a seasonal cholera outbreak are blended seamlessly into the narrative, providing a fullness that animates the story...continued

Full Review (488 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Just as "Joanie Loves Chachi" and "Laverne & Shirley" spun off with a focus on minor characters originally seen in the original television series "Happy Days," so too are there literary spinoffs. A spinoff is different from a sequel in that it does not continue the protagonist's story, instead it is drawn either from the backstory or from the viewpoint of a secondary character who appears in the original tale. In literature, as in life, every well-drawn individual can be the star of their own show. In A Vengeful Longing Morris takes the relatively minor-yet-key character of the police magistrate and makes him the center of his own set of novels (consisting so far of The Gentle Axe and A Vengeful Longing). It is, to my ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked A Vengeful Longing, try these:

  • A Visible Darkness jacket

    A Visible Darkness

    by Michael Gregorio

    Published 2011

    About this book

    More by this author

    Dark, intelligent, and vividly written, A Visible Darkness continues a masterful series of historical mysteries that portray a past torn between nationalism and humanism, superstition and science.

  • The Black Tower jacket

    The Black Tower

    by Louis Bayard

    Published 2009

    About this book

    More by this author

    Vidocq. The name strikes terror in the Parisian underworld of 1818. As founder and chief of a newly created plainclothes police force, Vidocq has used his mastery of disguise and surveillance to capture some of France’s most notorious and elusive criminals. Now he is hot on the trail of a tantalizing mystery—the fate of the young dauphin ...

We have 8 read-alikes for A Vengeful Longing, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by R. Morris
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

Who Said...

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd rather have been talking

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..