Line #14 Literature/SpecialAssignments


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3	''Special Assignments'' (Особые поручения) is a 1999 Russian detective novel by Boris Akunin. It is the fifth of fourteen novels in the Literature/ErastFandorin mystery series. Actually, it's more properly the fifth and sixth novels, as it consists of two separate, unrelated, and very different stories: "The Jack of Spades" and "The Decorator".
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5	* "The Jack of Spades" (Пиковый валет): It's 1886 in Moscow, four years after the events of ''Literature/TheDeathOfAchilles'', and Fandorin is still working as the deputy for "special assignments" of the governor of Moscow, Prince Dolgurukoi. The prince has just been swindled out of a hundred thousand rubles by an infamous con artist named Momos. Comic escapades ensue as Fandorin pursues Momos and his lovely partner in crime, Mimi. Along the way Fandorin picks up a [[TheWatson Watson]] in the form of his young assistant, rookie cop Anisii Tulipov.
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7	* "The Decorator" (Декоратор): 1889, three years later, and Fandorin remains employed as deputy to Prince Dolgurukoi. A prostitute is found murdered and horribly butchered on the streets of Moscow. Fandorin, acting on a hunch, has several more bodies of recently deceased prostitutes disinterred from the local cemetery. He confirms that all five dead prostitutes were victims of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, who has apparently relocated to Moscow after his murder spree one year before in London. Fandorin, with Tulipov tagging along, races to catch the brutal killer.
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10	!!Tropes:
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12	* AccidentalBargainingSkills: Fandorin tries to convince his future protege Tulipov to leave his old job and work for him full-time by making him increasingly generous employment offers—all the while Tulipov is at a loss for words because he's so flabbergasted by the very perspective of becoming Fandorin's assistant.
13	* AccidentalMisnaming: In ''The Decorator'', Dolgurukoi consistently botches the name of Izhitsin, the Head Police Master from the Public Prosecutor's Office who's been superseded by Fandorin. He comes up with Luzhitsin, Pizhitsin, and even Glagolev.
14	* AnachronismStew: A newspaper article in ''The Jack of Spades'' quotes ''Theatre/{{Sadko}}'', an opera that premiered eleven years later than the novella is set.
15	* AscendedFanboy: Anisiy Tulipov, towards Fandorin: he starts off as one of the many Fandorin fanboys among the younger police clerks in Moscow and eventually becomes his personal assistant and protege.
16	* AssholeVictim: Merchant Eropkin is really just a horrible monster--once had a man whipped to death for stealing from him, once had a man's hands smashed in a door for accidentally cutting him during a shave. Momos, who was about to flee Moscow to avoid being captured by Fandorin again, sticks around specifically to rob Eropkin.
17	* BittersweetEnding: In ''The Decorator'', Fandorin manages to catch the extremely dangerous deranged serial killer (who happens to be UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper himself) and then executes him but is left by his lover, who says she cannot live with a man who can kill a defenseless captive, even though she understands it was necessary. Also Anisii Tulipov and his sister are murdered by the killer.
18	* {{Blackface}}: Fandorin and Tulipov don this when they are disguised as Indian princes in an attempt to catch Momos.
19	* BornLucky: As noted throughout the series, Fandorin never loses at games of chance. Here he deduces that the charitable lottery is actually Momos's scam when he buys a ticket, and doesn't win.
20	* CallBack: Fandorin uses the backstory from Fandorin novel #2, ''Literature/MurderOnTheLeviathan'', as inspiration for a tale of an Indian Rajah and a diamond, in order to lure out Momos.
21	* CallForward:
22	** One of the suspicious advertisements that Tulipov reads out of the newspaper when looking for leads for Momos is for some sort of self-propelled carriage with "an internal-combustion engine."
23	** In ''The Decorator'' Fandorin takes one look at the bad complexion of Count Tolstoy, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and concludes that his days are numbered. The real [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Tolstoy Dmitry Tolstoy]] died a couple of weeks after the setting of this story.
24	* ChekhovsGunman: Pakhomenko, the genial night watchman at the cemetery, turns out to be The Decorator.
25	* ConMan: Momos. He starts his life of crime by taking out eleven different mortgages on a piece of land he inherited. He attracts the attention of Fandorin when he sells Prince Dolgurukoi's mansion to a gullible Englishman.
26	* ContrastingReplacementCharacter: Fandorin's lovers. Selfish, wild-tempered and spoiled Countess Ariadna "Addie" (bonus point: "ad" means "hell" in Russian, which gets lampshaded by Momus) in the first part and pious, gentle HeartwarmingOrphan and AllLovingHeroine Angelina in the second.
27	* ContrastingSequelAntagonist: The Jack of Spades, one of the most charming villains of the series with firm EvenEvilHasStandards principles who is in the end LetOffByTheDetective, and Jack the Ripper, one of the most depraved villains of the series who is personally shot by Fandorin. The only things they have in common are similar nicknames and MasterOfDisguise skills.
28	* DisposableSexWorker: In Moscow as in London, the Ripper goes after street prostitutes.
29	* DubNameChange: Anisii Tulpanov becomes Anisii Tulipov in the English translation because "tulip" in Russian is тюльпан ("tulpan").
30	* FingerInTheMail: The Decorator sends Fandorin a package containing a human ear. (In RealLife the actual Jack the Ripper sent the London PD half of a human kidney.)
31	* HateSink: Merchant Eropkin in ''The Jack of Spades''. The main antagonist is a sympathetic LovableRogue, but the reader can hate the greedy, cruel and hypocritical Eropkin.
32	* InJoke: One that at the time this novel was published was known only to a few. Mimi at one point adopts the alias "Princess Chkhartishvili". The Fandorin novels were published under the pen name "B. Akunin" because at the time Grigol Chkhartishvili, academic and professional Russian-Japanese translator, didn't want his peers to know he was writing detective fiction. Akunin/Chkhartishvili finally went public in 2000 when a magazine was about to out him.
33	* ItsPersonal: Fandorin says these exact words after Momos scams his way into Fandorin's house and steals all of Fandorin's girlfriend's stuff.
34	* ItWillNeverCatchOn: A Moscow newspaper report in ''The Decorator'' states that the citizens of Paris are nervous about their ugly new Eiffel Tower, with its base too small to withstand the wind.
35	* LetOffByTheDetective: Fandorin lets the Momos off at the end, mainly because he has no solid evidence against him, Momos returned everything he stole from Fandorin and his friends, and, along the way, helped him catch an AssholeVictim red-handed. He does arrest Mimi, however, but Momos gets her out of prison in no time.
36	* MoodWhiplash: ''The Jack of Spades'' is a lighthearted comic mystery about a pair of con men/thieves. ''The Decorator'' is about a vicious SerialKiller.
37	* NonPOVProtagonist: Used for most of the books in the Fandorin mystery series. In this one, Tulipov is the POV character for most of both novellas, with interludes in "The Jack of Spades" from Momos and "The Decorator" from The Decorator himself.
38	* OutlawCouple: Momos and Mimi
39	* PlayingCardMotifs: Momos goes into a prolonged InternalMonologue about the symbolism of the nickname he picked for himself.
40	* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Izhitzov, who decides that The Decorator must be a Tatar Muslim or a Jew (a "Yid"). Suverted when the book makes clear that his opinions are shared by the society around him and because he stops antagonizing Fandorin shortly after making those opinions clear when he becomes an AssholeVictim.
41	* SerialKiller: The Decorator, a deranged murderer.
42	* ShooOutTheClowns: Tulipov, the comic bumbling assistant from the first story, is killed off in the far darker second story.
43	* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: A hallmark of the Fandorin series, this time happening all in one book! Tulipov, Fandorin's bumbling assistant introduced in "The Jack of Spades", is killed off in "The Decorator".
44	* SwitchingPOV: ''The Jack of Spades'' switches POV chapters between Tulipov and Momos. ''The Decorator'' is mostly Tulipov, with some bits from The Decorator himself, until the book cycles through several POV characters towards the end.
45	* SympathyForTheDevil: Fandorin towards Momos
46	* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: The Decorator. Also, Momos, when not in disguise, looks very plain and unremarkable.
47	* TheyWereHoldingYouBack: The Decorator tries to do this to Fandorin and his loved ones but thankfully fails.
48	* TitleDrop: Fandorin's job title is Deputy for Special Assignments.

Context Literature / SpecialAssignments