The Baku Inheritance

I am thankful to Book Sirens for sending me a free copy of The Baku Inheritance in exchange for an honest review.  It is the first book in the City of Winds Series by Anne M. Kennedy and it takes place in the 1890s Baku, Azerbaijan. Anne M Kennedy is a writer of historical mystery thrillers set in Baku, Azerbaijan. The City of Winds is a series of five novels that span the years 1890 – 1920.

The publisher's summary:  

The shadowy world of nineteenth century Baku, Azerbaijan, is the backdrop to this thrilling tale of oil spies, treachery and a mysterious Faberge egg. Two characters: Anton - bereaved and bankrupt, and Klara - suspicious and secretive. Forced to tolerate each other in a deadly game, both must come to terms with what they are hiding from.

Anton knew something was wrong the moment he stepped ashore…

1890: The ancient city of Baku on the outermost edge of the Russian Empire.

Anton Sabroski has come home. But the once-beautiful mansion on the shores of the Caspian Sea is silent and dark, a decaying relic in a bustling city. Upstairs, his father lies dying, his oil empire in ruins, his friends gone, his only bequests to his son a jewelled Faberge egg containing a coded message and the care of Klara, a mysterious, hostile girl.

Unable to accept that his father was responsible for the loss of his family’s fortunes, Anton begins to investigate. But Baku is a city of many faces.

The story is a historical mystery that moves slowly. The time period is during the first oil boom at the turn of the last century in an oil town along the Caspian Sea. The novel captures the essence of Baku with it's details on architecture, traditional foods and customs. The oil business in Baku was thoroughly described as were the wealthy international oil barons who held sway. During this time period Azerbaijan was a part of the Russian Empire.

It seemed that every other page had someone smoking a shisha pipe. I had to look this up and Wikipedia states that Shisha is the Arabic name for a type of pipe for burning tobacco, in which smoke passes through a container of water before it is breathed in. Many people think that drawing tobacco smoke through water makes shisha less harmful than cigarettes, but that's not true. In a shisha session (which usually lasts 20-80 minutes), a shisha smoker can inhale the same amount of smoke as a cigarette smoker consuming over 100 cigarettes. I was expecting the pipe to be used for smoking opium but I was wrong.

The plot was intriguing but I felt that there was something off in its execution. I was expecting it to be a historical thriller but it's not, which is not the author’s fault. The book is a historical mystery. Despite my genre rumblings I felt that the pace was slow. I read the book in one sitting but cannot say I was riveted while I read it's pages. Given that the mystery to be solved was how Anton lost his inheritance and not the usual murder, I was not too engaged in the plot reveal. 

3 out of 5 stars.