Martin Cruz Smith is an American novelist renowned for his gripping thrillers that delve into complex international politics and the intricacies of human nature. He is particularly celebrated for his series featuring the Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, a character who first captivated readers in "Gorky Park." Smith's narrative style is characterized by its atmospheric depth, intricate plotting, and insightful exploration of societal dynamics. His work consistently offers readers suspenseful mysteries interwoven with profound observations on the human condition.
"Brilliant...One of the best books of the season." ASSOCIATED PRESS A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.
Gorky ParkA triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible and tries to stay alive doing it.NightwingVampire bats: Evil. Clever.Deadly.Driven by blood-hunger across the American landscape, they bred and multiplied, unseen and unsuspected, each one a grisly messenger of death. No warm-blooded creature is safe from their thirst. Now, as darkness gathers, the sky is filled with the frantic motion, the maddening murmur of . . . Nightwing.
He made too many enemies. He lost his party membership. Once Moscow’s top criminal investigator, Arkady Renko now toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship working with American trawlers in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when an adventurous female crew member is picked up dead with the day’s catch, Renko is ordered by his captain to investigate an accident that has all the marks of murder. Up against the celebrated Soviet bureaucracy once more, Renko must again become the obsessed, dedicated cop he was in Gorky Park and solve a chilling mystery fraught with international complications. Praise for Polar Star “Stunning.”—The New York Times Book Review “Impossible to put down . . . a book of heart-stopping suspense and intricate plotting, but also a meticulously researched, ambitious literary work of great distinction.”—The Detroit News “Martin Cruz Smith writes the most inventive thrillers of anyone in the first rank of thriller writers.”—The Washington Post Book World “Gripping . . . absorbing.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Sharply, evocatively written and elaborately plotted...It should find as many friends as did GORKY PARK." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD Back from exile, Arkady Reko returns to find that his country, his Moscow, even his job, are nearly dead. Not so his enemies. Hounded by the Russian mafia, chased by ruthless minions of the newly rich and powerful, and tempted by his great love, Arkady can only hope for escape. Fate, however, has other ideas.... A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A LITERARY GUILD MAIN SELECTION
Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko's quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.
Why is Pasha Ivanov - one of Russia's richest oligarchs - lying dead on the pavement outside his luxury high-rise apartment, his death an apparent open-and-shut suicide? Senior Investigator Arkady Renko has never been one to take evidence at face value and his investigations take him to the area around Chernobyl, deserted and forgotten.
I 1872 vender en engelsk mineingeniør modvilligt hjem fra Guldkysten. Hans foresatte sender ham til en mineby i Lancashire for at finde en forsvunden kapellan, og det bliver i enhver forstand en barsk og farefuld færd i en rå og umenneskelig underverden
The body, at least what was left of it, was drifting in Havana Bay the morning Arkady arrived from Moscow. Only the day before, he had received an urgent message from the Russian embassy in Havana that his friend Pribluda was missing and asking that he come.The Cubans insisted that this corpse floating in an inner tube was Pribluda, but Arkady wasn't so sure."You don't investigate assault, you don't investigate murder. Just what do you investigate?" Arkady asks Ofelia Osorio, a detective in the Policia Nacional de la Revolucion. "Or is it simply open season on Russians in Havana?"The comrades of the Cold War have parted bitterly, and the Russians who used to swarm through Havana's streets are now as rare as they are despised, much more so than Americans.Havana is overrun with color, music, and suspicion. The Revolution's heroes have outlived idealism. The Com-munist world has shrunk to Cuba. Paradise has become a stop on sex tours. It is a city of empty stores and talking drums, Karl Marx and sharp machetes, where an American radical rides around in Hemingway's car to tout island investments and a Wall Street developer on the run from the FBI flies a pirate flag."A dead Russian, a live Russian," Ofelia says. "What's the difference?" But the dead Russian is followed by the murders of a Cuban boxer and a prostitute. Although none of them is supposed to be investigated, Arkady cannot be stopped. He speaks no Spanish, knows nothing about Cuba, and, as a Russian, is a pariah. However, there is something about this faded, lovely, dangerous city--the rhythms of waves against the seawall, the insinuation of music always in the air, and, finally, Ofelia herself--that plunges Arkady back into life."What ultimately sets the Renko books apart is the careful writing, and, more important, the knowledge of the human heart that is carried through it, through them, first to last."–Chicago Tribune
