There, the seven Romanovs Tsar Nikolai, his wife Aleksandra, their hemophiliac son, Aleksei, and their four daughters are confined with a small staff of attendants, including Leonka, the kitchen boy of the title, who may or may not be narrator Mikhail. Narrated by 94-year-old Mikhail Semyanov, a Russian immigrant now living outside Chicago, the novel travels back to the bloody days of the Russian revolution, when the entire royal family is imprisoned in Siberia, in a building known as the House of Special Purpose. He has produced a detailed version of the Romanovs' captivity, but the book fails to deliver much drama, despite the inherent mystery of the events. Alexander's first novel is based on "decades of painstaking research" and access to previously sealed Russian archives. The story of their last days, their possible escape and the final resting place of the $500 million in jewels hidden in their clothing provides periodic grist for fiction writers. The Romanovs are arguably second only to Jack the Ripper as objects of literary speculation.
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