As my first Alexis J. Smith mystery written by E.E. Smith, I
would have to say
RUSSIAN ROULETTE was a pretty good novel to read. This story
line had two
separate cases for our private investigator to solve.
Alexis starts off visiting her
old boardinghouse after being away for a while only to find
out that her room
has already been replaced. A Russian ballerina with the
Bolshoi by the name of
Katerina Shultzskya was now occupying Alexis' old room.
However, there seemed
to be something odd about this young dancer and her
boyfriend Yonnie
Petrovich. For one, was the Russian ballet company even
touring right now?
Mainly why do they drive an old Doubleday Dairy truck around
town?
Alexis uses
her many contacts to find out some very interesting facts
that help her to get to
the bottom of so many questions. Lets just hope she can keep
herself safe and
out of harms way at the same time. Things are not always
what they seem.
As soon as one case is solved Alexis is on another.
Receiving a call from an old
friend from Scotland Yard, Harry Hawkins, Alexis is asked to
help find an Russian
countess' dog that she claims was kidnapped by Humphrey
Bogart. The American
woman, Billie, who married into her place in society, seemed
a little strange. She
warms up to Alexis and even request that she stays at the
estate with her. They
become fast friends and Billie shares a lot of secrets with
her. Alexis feels torn
with things start getting a little out of hand. A mystery
that starts out as a
missing dog case turns into something much more serious and
Harry is afraid
that Alexis is traveling in dangerous territories that she
may not be able to get
out of. Count Brasov loves his wife very much and will do
whatever he needs to
keep her safe. Is he hiding something else? Will Alexis get
in the way? Just what
are the Count's priorities?
Smith did a great job with this storyline. RUSSIAN ROULETTE
did keep me interested and my
anticipation kept growing until the end. Her writing is
different then what I
usually read, but I felt that came from her experience of
writing more plays. I
love mysteries and I fully enjoyed RUSSIAN ROULETTE.
Back in Sacramento again, where the sign on the door of her
detective agency reads ALEXIS J. SMITH – Discreet Inquiries,
Lexie finds that her old room at Mrs. Snidely’s
Establishment for Young Ladies (a fancy name for a
boardinghouse_ has been let to someone else while she was
away on a case in England. The new tenant is supposedly a
ballerina, and a defector from the Russian Bolshoi, seeking
political asylum in this country. But is she? Lexie doubts
the story and begins to investigate, determined to get at
the truth while ignoring the danger to herself.
With the case successfully concluded, she is free
to accept another assignment from her friend Inspector Harry
Hawkins at Scotland Yard. The case sounds bizarre from the
beginning, but gets more so with each turn of events. It
seems that a Russian count, a nephew of the late Tzar
Nicholas II, is living in exile in Oxfordshire, with his
young American bride. In Harry’s opinion, the countess is
more than a little mad, demanding that Scotland Yard recover
her dog, a Russian wolfhound, which she claims has been
stolen by – of all people – Humphrey Bogart! It will take
all of Lexie’s skill and unflinching determination to
connect the dots, right up to the deadly conclusion.
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