STALIN’S GHOST – An Arkady Renko Novel
Martin Cruz Smith Macmillan $35

My review that was published in the Sunday Star Times yesterday follows:

I reckon it is a shrewd move by the author and/or publishers to incorporate into the subtitle of this latest Moscow-set novel the name of the astute, wary, cynical and intrepid investigator, Arkady Renko, as he has become a much-admired hero from way back in 1981 when readers first met him in the phenomenally successful Gorky Park .
This of course was later made into a movie in which William Hurt played Renko.

Our protagonist survived the Cold War years, the setting for Gorky Park, he was a young man back then, he faced down the Russian mob in Red Square, subsequently he came through Chernobyl largely unscathed in Wolves Eat Dogs, endured the Arctic ocean in Polar Star, then carried out a murder investigation in Cuba after Russian influence there had greatly diminished in Havana Bay. In a way one gets an outline of contemporary Russian history since the days of Brezhnev in reading this sequence of novels.

He can be a bit morose can Renko but that mood seems well justified in this his sixth adventure where we find that once again he is the honest cop wading through a swamp of corruption. He is, as always, the scourge of the state prosecutor’s office.

The novel opens with the laconic, and now middle-aged Renko deep below a snow- covered Moscow in the city’s subway system where there have been reported sightings of a ghostly Stalin. The sightings prove to be unfounded but it becomes clear that there is a longing in some parts to return to the ultra-national days of Stalin’s bloody rule.
The story then moves to a violent domestic dispute, and a couple of apparent accidental deaths and before long Renko sees that a couple former dashing Russian soldiers highly decorated for their exploits in the Chechen war, and now Moscow-based detectives, are a common link.
Not only that but they are active in the Russian Patriot Movement which still dreams of Stalin’s days when Russia was all powerful on the world stage.

Then the scene shifts away from Moscow to Tver, a rather dull city on the Volga River, which was the scene of several bloody battles in World War Two and where today grave plunderers are digging for souvenirs to sell on the Internet. Miraculously Renko survives two attempts on the same day to murder him although with the second attempt when he is shot in the head at point blank range he only survives because the gun is an old World War Two model that has lost much of its lethality. In spite of that a period of hospitalisation follows.

In the end Renko prevails, justice is done, against the odds his private life is restored and so he lives to fight another day. Hopefully this means there will be another novel featuring our reluctant hero.

Martin Cruz Smith is a skilled writer, He is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, their highest accolade, and a recipient of the UK’s Golden Dagger Award. He lives in the U.S. but is clearly very familiar with Moscow and must be something of a student of the old Soviet Union and present day Putin’s Russia.

Stalin’s Ghost is a page-turning thriller, a most accomplished piece of writing, and damn good read on a wet weekend.