The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre

Arkady Strugatsky‏ · Boris Strugatsky‏

مارچ 2015 · Melville House

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A hilarious spoof on the classic country-house murder mystery, from the Russian masters of sci-fi—never before translated
 
When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at the remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He’s there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude.
 
But he hadn’t counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses. And as the chalet fills up, strange things start happening—things that seem to indicate the presence of another, unseen guest. Is there a ghost on the premises? A prankster? Something more sinister? And then an avalanche blocks the mountain pass, and they’re stuck.
 
Which is just about when they find the corpse. Meaning that Glebksy’s vacation is over and he’s embarked on the most unusual investigation he’s ever been involved with. In fact, the further he looks into it, the more Glebsky realizes that the victim may not even be human.
 
In this late novel from the legendary Russian sci-fi duo—here in its first-ever English translation—the Strugatskys gleefully upend the plot of many a Hercule Poirot mystery—and the result is much funnier, and much stranger, than anything Agatha Christie ever wrote.

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ARKADY (1925–1991) and BORIS (1933–2012) STRUGATSKY were the most acclaimed and beloved science fiction writers of the Soviet era. They are the authors of twenty-five novels together, including Definitely Maybe, Roadside Picnic (which was the basis for Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker); Snail on the Slope; and Hard to Be a God, as well as numerous short stories, essays, plays, and film scripts. Their books have been translated into multiple languages and published in twenty-seven countries. The asteroid 3054 Strugatskia, discovered in 1977, is named after the brothers.

JOSH BILLINGS is a writer and translator who lives in Rockland, Maine. His translations of Alexander Pushkin’s Tales of Belkin and Alexander Kuprin’s The Duel have been published by Melville House. His recent writing has appeared in The Collagist and The Literary Review. He blogs at begborrowstijl.blogspot.com.