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The Dead Mountaineer's Inn  By  cover art

The Dead Mountaineer's Inn

By: Arkady Strugatsky,Boris Strugatsky
Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
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Publisher's summary

From the Russian masters of sci-fi comes The Dead Mountaineer's Inn, a hilarious spoof on the classic country-house murder mystery.

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at a 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?

When an avalanche blocks the mountain pass and traps everyone in the chalet, the corpse is finally discovered. Glebsky'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 an Hercule Poirot mystery - and the result is much funnier and much stranger than anything Agatha Christie ever wrote.

©1970 Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Translation © 2015 by Josh Billings. Introduction © 2015 by Jeff VanderMeer (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about The Dead Mountaineer's Inn

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    4 out of 5 stars

Good, but poor in the end.

The ending of this novel was not exactly on parr with the rest of the book. As the mystery progresses you are takin in, making guesses of your own, wild interpretations of what the clues really meant, and then everything is wrong and just twisted and stupid. I won’t spoil anything of course but the ending does not make it not worth a read if you like Russian science fiction.

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46 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars

SKIP THE INTRODUCTION IF YOU’VE NEVER READ THIS BOOK

I’ve never read a Strugatsky brothers book before but I enjoyed The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn once I got an ear for the pacing and dialogue. The book is full of odd non-sequiturs, mostly in the dialogue, but I imagine most of those arise from cultural differences as well as from the difference between modern, Western writing and the writing style of mid 1900’s Russia. However, by the time I’d finished the book, the quaint, oddball characters had become old friends and I look forward to listening to the book again in the future.
My main complaint was the translator’s wholly unnecessary and (I felt) rather masturbatory introduction, which contained spoiler-filled overviews of the major characters and plot line. It would not have been out of place at the end of the book, but listening to it at the beginning almost caused me to return the book before I’d even made it to the story itself. Even having finished the book now, I feel as if my view of the characters is still tainted by the translator’s opinions of them. Save the introduction for the end if you wish to go into the story with a fresh, unsullied perspective.

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36 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars

Pretty fun read.

I think that the introduction overplays the "abstract" nature of the story. It is strange, but doesn't dwell on its own strangeness very long. It's interesting how two Cold War Russian writers imagined aliens and detective novels.

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30 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting and Odd.

Would you try another book from Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky and/or Keith Szarabajka?

Road side picnic was better. This one is odd and you should try it out.

Any additional comments?

Worth a read if you're into the genre. It gets better as it goes along and gets really weird by the end.

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19 people found this helpful

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wonderful well written story

once again the Strugatsky's have amazed me with their incredible emersive story telling. A recommendation for any lover of literature.

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11 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars

Spoof of the murder mystery genre!

Russian brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky released this humor novel in 1970 and it was released in English 12 years later. It is actually quite funny as they imitate classic murder mystery novels quite well. Narration is outstanding.

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8 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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What can I say

I find this really hard to review, I do not know if I really understood this book. It had a hypnotic quality so I finished it, I liked the setting and the feel of it. But am totally confused by the story.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Narrator made this more interesting than it was.

The story started out interesting, the climax was okay, but the relationships between two characters made the ending worthwhile. It's a hard thing to do, but the narrator made it entertaining.

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4 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Cute, but

I guess I don't really need aliens to spice up my mystery reads. Science fiction fans would probably get a kick out of this.

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2 people found this helpful

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Strangest sci-fi I've ever read

(As posted on Goodreads)
This is the most DIFFERENT Sci-fi book that I have ever read or conceived of, and I'm not sure whether I like it or not – furthermore, I can't assess whether it's any good :-(. Okay, let's just look at it from the review perspective. It certainly starts out as a normal mystery, and the sci-fi aspect really doesn't appear until near the end – well, halfway through, anyway. It may just be my belief in reliance on reality that's tripping me up, but I do enjoy sci-fi/fantasy books frequently without the need for reality or the truth of our world. Maybe the problem is the illusion of our world and reality, and I just don't deal with change of world and reality on the fly. Maybe that's an indication that I'm "close minded", but I really don't like to believe that.
For the most part, it actually was a good book, and it forced the reader to bend beliefs change hes views of the possibilities of the world.

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1 person found this helpful