This series follows the life and work of Arkady Renko, a chief homicide inspector in Moscow. It paints a gritty picture of post-Soviet Russia through compelling crime plots. Readers are drawn into intricate cases and political machinations that shape the characters' lives and the nation's destiny. This is immersive reading for fans of detective fiction and Russian literature.
They lay peacefully under their thawing crust of ice. Pribluda shouldered Arkady aside. When I am satisfied questions of state security are not involved, then you begin. It did indeed become a triple murder investigation for Chief Investigator Arkady Renko. Three corpses had been found in Moscow. But why the horrific mutilations?
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
Post-communist Russia. In the political thaw and the advent of the capitalist economy, the Moscow mafia soon imposes itself and the black-market hustlers start eliminating the competition - along comes Arkady Renko, special investigator. Cruz Smith has also written "Gorky Park".
The body, what remained of it, was drifting in Havana Bay when Arkady arrived from Moscow, prompted by an urgent message from the Russian embassy about his missing friend Pribluda. The Cubans claimed the corpse in an inner tube was Pribluda, but Arkady had doubts. He confronts Ofelia Osorio, a detective in the Policia Nacional de la Revolucion, questioning the lack of investigations into assaults and murders, wondering if it’s open season on Russians in Havana. The Cold War comrades have turned bitter, and the once-frequent Russians in Havana are now rare and despised, even more than Americans. The city is vibrant with color and music, yet steeped in suspicion. The Revolution’s heroes have lost their idealism, and Cuba has become a mere stop for sex tourism. Amidst empty stores and a mix of ideologies, an American radical promotes investments while a Wall Street developer on the run from the FBI flies a pirate flag. Despite the dangers, including the murders of a Cuban boxer and a prostitute, Arkady is undeterred. He struggles with the language, is a pariah as a Russian, yet feels drawn to the city’s beauty and rhythm, especially Ofelia. The narrative explores the depths of the human heart, showcasing the careful writing that distinguishes the series.
Masterfully crafted and told with extraordinary insight and imaginative breadth, the bestselling author of GORKY PARK brings us Renko's most beguiling and unusual adventure to date.
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.
In Three Stations, Renko's skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been technically suspended from the prosecutor's office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of Moscow's main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to everyone -- except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia's premier charity ball, the billionaires' Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow's rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash in the face of Putin's crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed him in power. Renko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children he is desperate to protect. In Three Stations, Smith produces a complex and hauting vision of an emergent Russia's secret underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a bureaucracy still paralyzed by power and fear.
A blistering new Arkady Renko novel whose heroine - the courageous, enigmatic journalist Tatiana - is based on real-life journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
From the 'master of the international thriller' (New York Times), comes a new Arkady Renko novel.
