Red Square (Arkady Renko Series #3)

by Martin Cruz Smith

Overview

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....

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345384737
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/28/1993
Series:	Arkady Renko Series , #3
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.84(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include Gorky Park, Stallion Gate, Polar Star, Stalin’s Ghost, Rose, December 6, Tatiana, and The Girl from Venice. He is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize, a recipient of Britain’s Golden Dagger Award, and a winner of the Premio Piemonte Giallo Internazionale. He lives in California.

Hometown:

San Rafael, California

Date of Birth:

November 3, 1942

Place of Birth:

Reading, Pennsylvania

Education:

B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1964

Website:

http://www.martincruzsmith.com

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

The Soviet upheavals have fueled the glowing talent of Smith (Gorky Park), America's preeminent writer of Russia-based thrillers. Investigator Arkady Renko returns from exile on the Polar Star fleet to find the new Moscow a dramatic battlefield of warlords and entrepreneurs; behind it, as still as a painted backdrop, eight million people standing in line. An ingenious bomb kills Renko's informer the banker for freewheeling black marketeers-leading Arkady's team through the quicksand of mafia-dominated official graft. His workaholic forensics expert, Polina (who must wait in line for morgue time as well as for beets), identifies the bomb method, leading Arkady too close for aparatchik comfort. He is bumped from the case, but only after a clue from the dead man's fax (Where is Red Square?) points him toward a Munich connection. Meanwhile, he is stunned to hear his lost love, Irina, on Munichbased Radio Liberty and with his last bit of clout wrangles a barely official trip to Germany. His mastery of the Russian system stymies the Munich embassy and reunites him with Irina in the midst of nasty fellow citizens bent on national theft. With vital aid from a Munich cop, Arkady links the fax clue to Russian bureaucrats, the ethnic Checken mafia, and German bankers. The novel paints the new post-Soviet aura through the stoic hero's wry humor and leaves Arkady and Irina perfectly poised, like Russia itself, for whatever comes next. Major ad/ promo; author tour. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A lot has happened to Arkady Renko and to his country since he found three bodies frozen in the middle of Gorky Park more than 11 years ago. There was exile in Siberia, then working on a fishing boat in the Arctic ("Polar Star" ), and now, just prior to the 1991 attempted coup, he finds himself reestablished as an investigator with the Moscow police and struggling to contain a flourishing underworld in the newly democratic Soviet Union. As in "Gorky Park" , however, it's not long before Arkady runs afoul of his superiors, who may be democratized but are still bureaucrats at heart. A seemingly straightforward murder investigation leads Arkady first to corruption in high places, then to official censure, and finally to Munich, where he is reunited with Irina, the lover who got him in all that trouble back in the early 1980s. Just as cynical as ever but even more world weary, Arkady lands in an all-too-familiar position--caught in the middle, this time between continuing his investigation into what now appears to be an art-smuggling racket and winning Irina back from her current lover, Max, who happens to be the brains behind the smuggling scheme. To some extent, Smith is merely replaying "Gorky Park" here--same tune, different lyrics--but, even so, it remains an alluring melody. Daily life in ever-changing Russia is once again masterfully evoked, and, after three novels, the character of Arkady has achieved an almost archetypal resonance: a hybrid of Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, this chain-smoking insomniac with a taste for misery, a perverse love of deprivation, a desperate need to undermine authority, and an unflagging belief in the resuscitative power of love calls out to that beaten down, trod-upon side of ourselves, but also to our not-yet-stifled romantic souls. Misery and romance--an irresistible combination.

Bill Ott