Brilliant book with a great setting, and not a difficult read
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"Gorky Park" - Great convoluted murder mystery set in the Soviet Union. It's a bit overlong. The film version is a simplified travesty.
"Polar Star" - My favourite of the books. It's a bit more like a traditional murder mystery as it has everyone trapped together on a fish processing ship.
"Red Square" - Perhaps the most inventive of the books. I always thought it was a great idea what the red square of the title actual is, and what it does.
"Havana Bay" - Arkady goes to Cuba. This was the first of the books that I read. If I read it in chronological order I might like it a lot more. As it was, I felt utterly confused by the book as it had two alien cultures meeting each other, and a lot of backstory. I enjoyed it enough to read the others so I think it must be a good book.
"Wolves Eat Dogs" - Another excellent setting. This time Arkady Renko goes into modern day, semi-deserted radioactive Chernobyl. I thought this was probably the most purely enjoyable book of the series as the first two or three feel quite weighty even if they're not.
"Stalin's Ghost" - It's probably the lesser of the six books but considering the quality of the previous novels, that's not really a critiscism. It's fairly short and not half as labyrinthine as the earlier books. I'm also slightly puzzled by the logic of it.
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All Cruz Smith fans should love this book
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I think this one tops his list so far. Martin displays immense passion for Russia and a wealth of knowledge and imagination for the whole Chernobyl dissaster that you feel he must have been there. Since reading this book I've gone on to study more about Chernobyl, inspired by this story. As well as all this, Renko never fails to leave you wanting more of his exploits. Great charactirisation and plot.
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Renko's as pleasing as ever
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This is not MCS's best book and it's certainly not Arkady Renko's finest hour but it is an enthralling storyline and an unforgettable picture of a dying (if not dead) Chernobyl.
I can only imagine - from Mr. Smith's descriptive powers - what it must be like to live and die prematurely and in great pain when scratching an existence in and around this radioactive setting.
The story itself seems to take second place in this narrative. It is most certainly the people and the environs that Renko comes across as he searches for the killer or killers of some less than courageous Mucovite industrialists. That he solves most of the problems is a tribute to his dogged investigations coupled with at least some luck in meeting people who are prepared to assist.
Renko is ageing (aren't we all?) and Mr. Smith manages to place Renko in situations where he suffers physically when he would not have done so in the earlier books.
I like this book. If this was the first Martin Cruz Smith novel I'd come across, I'd admire the writing; I'd be confused about the plot but I would have finished the book with a satisfaction not reserved for all thriller writers. I look forward to next Renko novel shortly.
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Interesting
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I've read this twice. It may not be as exciting as some of his other books but at least it is original and far better than the cliched badly written so called bestsellers. It contains interesting information about Chernobyl. There is as always in the author's books, an interesting bunch of characters.
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A tricky book to describe to others
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This is a tricky one.
This is an author with a supreme talent for describing faraway environments to the reader, whether it be the late end-of-the-Cold-War Soviet Union, Tokyo in the middle of WWII or life aboard a polar-based trawler.
This is an author who has written truly excellent books, whether it be the Arkady Renko series (Polar Star is atmospheric fiction at its very best) or his other standalone work (try Stalliongate and December 6th (released as Tokyo Station here in the UK)).
This novel is set some years after Chernobyl, and again the author evokes this fantastic sense of atmosphere. I suppose most of us will never go to Chernobyl, but his description of the setting is so good as to be utterly convincing.
But this book is a victim of the author's earlier excellence. What I guess were designed to be "twists 'n' turns" in the plot serve only to confuse the narrative. Arkady and his partner Victor aside, the characters are unable to generate any empathy or sympathy in the reader whatsoever. The villain's explanation (?) at the end of the book seems to be a real hack.
So, I bought the book, I'm keeping it and I won't be selling it on. There is some chronically poor fiction in the shops, by names who seem to be better known, like Jeffrey Deaver or Matthew Reilly.
Martin Cruz Smith is way WAY above them. The author's descriptions of the post-fallout Chernobyl are mesmerising. But buyer beware, an excellent author was possibly misfiring when he submitted this one.
But I still think it earns 4 stars !
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