This monograph by Claire Whitehead is a narratological study of Russian crime fiction that was published in the period between the Great Reforms of the 1860s and the October Revolution. Since Russian crime fiction has received less academic attention than literary works of so-called high culture, Whitehead's study contributes to our understanding of the popular genre and its Russian modifications, narrative techniques that were typical of crime fiction, as well as the evolution of Russian literature in the roughly six decades preceding the Revolution. On the one hand, Whitehead's monograph supplements historical studies such as Avram Reitblat's Ot Bovy k Bal΄montu i drugie raboty po istoricheskoi sotsiologii russkoi literatury (2009) and Louise McReynolds's Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia (2013). From Whitehead's monograph, the reader learns about historical circumstances that influenced specific subgenres of crime fiction in Russia as well as about representative authors who worked in this genre (Nikolai Sokolovskii, 1860s, Nikolai Timofeev, 1870s, Aleksandr Shkliarevskii, 1880s). On the other hand, Whitehead's analysis is not organized chronologically or by individual authors. Instead, she primarily focuses on narrative techniques of the genre. By way of studying the narrative voice, temporal organization, intertextuality, and parody, Whitehead compares Russian crime fiction to works by authors from western Europe and the United States.

Besides the introduction and conclusion, the monograph consists of six chapters, organized by two into three parts. The first two chapters (Part I: Authority) examine literary techniques used by Russian authors of crime fiction to 1) add credibility to their stories by means of creating an impression that their narratives were non-fictional accounts of “actual lived experience” (12); and 2) depict an investigator as a figure of “social and diagetic” authority (12). Chapters 3 and 4 (Part II: Curiosity and Suspense) examine the role of dialogue in promoting a sense of “verisimilitude and drama” (13) in the narrative, as well as the relationship between the story and the plot, which is used to create suspense, an essential component of a detective novel. Chapters 5 and 6 (Part III: Textual Games) provide an engaging analysis of intertextuality and metatextuality in early Russian crime fiction as well as discuss instances of parody in this genre, which demonstrates nineteenth-century authors’ awareness of the genre's conventions.

Whereas students of narratology may find a plethora of useful information in the first four chapters of the monograph, scholars who are mostly interested in the nineteenth-century literary canon will especially appreciate Chapter 5 and the two concluding chapters in Whitehead's study. In these three chapters, Whitehead examines the origins of Russian crime fiction in the nineteenth century in connection with the works by Fedor Dostoevskii and Anton Chekhov, which were inspired by popular stories about crime and, at the same time, influenced this genre. A detailed reading of Chekhov's Shvedskaia spichka as a parody of popular crime stories is especially insightful.

Whitehead demonstrates (referring, specifically, to Aleksandr Shkliarevskii's life and work) that although it is impossible to view Dostoevskii's novels as crime fiction, the writer's focus on the reasons for committing crime (the issue of “whydunit” as opposed to the “whodunit”) was also typical of popular crime novels of the period. In making this connection, Whitehead confirms McReynolds's argument about the Russian genre's interest in detailed depictions of society and social conditions as catalysts of criminal activity. While not trying to reduce Crime and Punishment to a detective novel, Whitehead suggests that the author's sensitivity to depicting a criminal's psychology was also common among authors of popular crime fiction. To support her argument and provide a wider context for understanding early Russian crime fiction, Whitehead includes into her analysis such texts as Dostoevskii's Notes from the House of the Dead.

Whitehead's monograph is not the easiest text to read. Especially in the first four chapters of the monograph, Whitehead's discussion of various narrative techniques may be hard to follow for someone who is unfamiliar with specific authors and narratives that she discusses, since many texts are presented only in passing, mostly as sources of particular techniques rather than engaging narratives. This shortcoming notwithstanding, Whitehead's analysis of early Russian crime fiction enriches our understanding of the detective genre and of the literary process in the nineteenth century.