Starred Review. Moscow-based Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, in his outstanding sixth outing (after Wolves Eat Dogs), investigates a murder-for-hire scheme that leads him to suspect two fellow police detectives, Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman, both former members of Russia's elite Black Berets, who served in Chechnya. Isakov, a war hero, is now running for public office. Renko must also look into reports that the ghost of Stalin has begun appearing on subway platforms and why several bodies of Black Berets who served in Chechnya with Isakov have turned up in the morgue. Despite repeated threats to his life, Renko stubbornly perseveres, seeking justice in a land that has no official notion of that concept. Smith eschews vertiginous twists and surprises, concentrating instead on Renko as he slowly and patiently builds his case until the pieces fall together and he has again, if not exactly triumphed, at least survived. This masterful suspense novel casts a searing light on contemporary Russia. 250,000 first printing. (June)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

His sixth Arkady Renko novel in 26 years, Martin Cruz Smith has produced a suspenseful page-turner packed full of vivid characters, clever dialogue, and hair-raising plot twists. In addition to a gripping mystery, readers will embrace the detailed, harrowing descriptions of the harshness and violence of life in the "New Russia." Critics unanimously praised Smith's sobering depiction of contemporary, post-Communist Russia; indeed, the country emerges as a character in its own right. The Wall Street Journal complained of implausible story lines and the questionable nature of Renko's career choices, but most critics were delighted to see Arkady Renko back in action. Readers will no doubt share their enthusiasm.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

*Starred Review* At the end of Wolves Eat Dogs (2005), it looked like Arkady Renko, the browbeaten Russian cop perpetually caught in the backdraft of history, had emerged from grayed-out Chernobyl with an uncontaminated shred of hope--a new relationship, perhaps even a reason for living. By the time we pick up the story, however, Renko is back in Moscow, the relationship is splintering, the teenager he had unofficially adopted is living on the streets, and his career is once again on the scrap heap. So it's only natural that the odd man out would land the case nobody wants: investigating the purported sightings of Joseph Stalin's ghost at a Moscow subway station. It's clear that the Stalin scam is being used by reactionaries as a way of fanning the "good old days" movement, but raining on the parade of a bunch of aging WWII vets reliving old glory has lose-lose all over it. Then Renko catches the scent of a bigger story behind Stalin's ghost--war crimes committed by the reactionaries' golden-boy politician--and follows it to remote Tver, where Smith unveils another of his unforgettable set pieces: the search for and exhumation of Russian soldiers massacred on the eastern front. From Gorky Park (1981) onward, this series has always been about the perils of digging: whether it's bodies under the snow or radioactive facts that the powerful want to keep hidden, the treasures that Renko seeks always contain the seeds of his own destruction. But somehow digging his own grave is what keeps Renko alive--and keeps us reading. Bill Ott

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The excellent Russian detective Arkady Renko investigates supposed sightings of Josef Stalin in the Moscow subway, getting himself shot in the head in the process. Nostalgic, steel-toothed babushkas and heroes of the Great Patriotic War are of course among the wishful watchers and waiters Detective Renko spots hoping for a glimpse of the ghost of the Glorious Leader in the world's busiest subway, but so are an avant-garde filmmaker-turned-pornographer and a couple of American political consultants. Renko, whose relationship with enigmatic emergency physician Eva Kazka began in the ruins of radioactive Chernobyl in Smith's 2004 Wolves Eat Dogs, continues to find sex with the brilliant Ukranian stupendous, but they seem to be barely speaking out of bed. Part of the problem is Renko's obsessive detective work. He does not relent. Ever. But there is also the matter of Eva's continuing relationship with Nikolai Isakov, the commando she met years ago when she was patching up Chechnyans and Isakov was shooting them. Isakov is now a detective like Renko, but one with a political future and friends in high places. Isakov, whose political leanings are toward the old Soviet State, is also involved with the Stalin sightings and with the serial murders of a number of his old comrades from Chechnya. Complicating matters further for Detective Renko is the disappearance of Zhenya, the feral teenaged chess master he's been trying to civilize. The more Renko uncovers of Isakov's involvements, the more Renko's masters want him out of town. And it is outside Moscow, in the unreconstructed Soviet city of Tver, that everything comes to a boil as an unarmed, badly battered Renko takes on Isakov and his remaining associates.Smith's lawless modern Russia continues to prove as terrifying as the Cold-War state. Possibly scarier. (Kirkus Reviews)