Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Kristen at BookNAround is hosting in September.  Please visit her terrific blog for reviews of her favorite types of books, mostly contemporary/literary fiction, historical fiction, young adult, narrative non-fiction (travel, cooking, etc.) and memoirs.

I got two books last week, with an Eastern European theme:



The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer. I've read a couple of his earlier books and thought they were great. This one is supposed to be even better.

 

Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith. I am a big fan of his Arkady Renko series so am looking forward to this one.

Review: Red Square

Red Square is the third book in Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series, following Renko’s introduction in Gorky Park and Siberian exile in Polar Star.  In Red Square, Renko is back in Moscow, reinstated as an investigator with the militia. His efforts to discover the killer of a black market financier lead him to the world of high-stakes art smuggling, the Munich studios of Radio Liberty, and the arms of his lost love Irina.

Set at the brink of the 1991 “August Coup” that precipitated the final breakup of the Soviet Union, Red Square is as moody and grim as all the Renko novels. Mafioso capitalists – still more robber than baron – vie for control of the fledgling new economy while people stand in line for beets and Party apparatchiks cling to the shreds of power. Smith captures the inherent dichotomies with snapshots such as this scene at the end of Renko’s interview of a suspect at the man’s Western-style sports bar:

Borya . . . dropped his voice. . . . “[D]o you think I’d endanger all this, everything I’ve achieved, to take some sort of primitive revenge? That’s the old mentality. We have to catch up with the rest of the world or we’re going to be left behind. We’ll all be in empty buildings and starving to death. We have to change. Do you have a card?” he asked suddenly.

“Party card?”

“We collect business cards and have a drawing once a month for a bottle of Chivas Regal.” Borya controlled a smile, barely.

It is detailed touches like this – as well as emotionally evocative lines such as “despair saturated the air” and “the threadbare overcoats of Soviet crime” – that create the authentic atmosphere in Smith’s novels and raise them above the typical thriller.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Martin Cruz Smith book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Favorite Author: Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith has written 30 novels, most of them mysteries, many written under pen names.

He is best known for his series featuring Muscovite detective, Arkady Renko. The series began with the blockbuster Gorky Park, made into an excellent movie staring William Hurt and Lee Marvin. The second book takes place on board an enormous floating factory of a Soviet fishing vessel in the Bering Sea. In the third, Renko is back in Russia as the Soviet Union crumbles. Then he is off to Cuba, followed by post-disaster Chernobyl, before returning to Putin's Russia. They are all exciting!

The series, in publication order:

Gorky Park (1981)

Polar Star (1989)

Red Square (1992) (reviewed here)

Havana Bay (1999)

Wolves Eat Dogs (2004)

Stalin's Ghost (2007)

Three Stations (2011)

Tatiana (2013)

The books are moody, grim, and action-packed. Smith absolutely nails the gritty disappointments of Soviet life. I have read six and have the last two to go. 

NOTES

This list was last updated on March 2, 2019.

Red Square was the "red" book for the 2009 Colorful Reading Challenge.