Arkady Renko and Stalin's Ghost
Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Staff Picks , Fiction
Twenty-six years ago, Gorky Park transported American readers to a frozen crime scene in Moscow and introduced Senior Inspector Arkady Renko, a homicide specialist in a country "that had little organized crime and no talent for finesse." A murderer is frequently a drunk nearby.
But evidence of a triple murder has emerged in the thawing ice and snow of April. A KGB major is already on the scene when Renko arrives. Renko's relationship with the KGB is testy and antagonistic. The victims—two men, and a woman wearing ice skates—will be difficult to identify. Each has a gunshot wound in the head and in the heart. The hands have been removed to prevent fingerprinting.
Renko lights a cigarette. His job is to find killers, but he can’t stand the sight of a dead body.
Gorky Park became a huge bestseller as a straightforward police procedural distinguished by its thoroughly researched and carefully conceived setting, the capital metropolis of the Communist empire. And by Renko, himself: highly intelligent, cynical, and a constant irritant to the police and militia bureaucracies.
Stalin’s Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith's latest Renko novel, supplies satisfying psychological insight into Renko's boyhood and his relationship with his father, a Russian general who knew Josef Stalin. But this Moscow is a far deadlier place than before. It is plagued by violence from organized crime and freelance killers. Corruption springs now from appetite more often than from ideology.
Renko is ordered to investigate reports that Stalin's specter haunts the Moscow subway. (Matters concerning Stalin, let alone his apparition, are regarded as sensitive political issues by the government.) As foolish as the assignment seems to Renko, it overlaps with another case he’s been working on: a murder-for-hire scheme that points to fellow homicide cops, Isakov and Urman, heroes of the fighting in Chechnya and former members of Russia's elite Black Berets.
Amid his methodical investigation, Renko endures betrayals by those he holds closest and survives a serious gunshot wound, among other attempts on his life. Even a transfer to the city of Tver, 160 km northwest of Moscow, does not deter him.
Fifty-four years ago, a million soldiers engaged at Tver. In the surrounding forests and fields, super-patriot Red Diggers work to exhume the Russian dead for proper identification, while opportunistic Black Diggers hunt for war booty to sell on the Internet. In this singular place of dichotomous Russia, possessing ghosts enough to overflow the of Moscow Metro, Arkady Renko finally obtains his answers.
Stalin's Ghost is a great addition to the series and readable even if you've never previously encountered a Renko novel. Check it out!
