Three Stations

July 5, 2010
Smith's seventh Arkady Renko novel (after Stalin's Ghost) falls short of his usual high standard. The Russian police detective, now a senior investigator, is seriously considering quitting the force because his boss, state prosecutor Zurin, refuses to assign him any cases. Renko seizes the chance to buck Zurin by finding the truth behind the death of a prostitute found in a workers' trailer parked in Moscow's seedy Three Stations (aka Komsomol Square). While the young woman, who Renko guesses is 18 or 19, apparently took a fatal drug overdose, he believes she was murdered. A subplot centering on a mother whose infant is stolen on a train detracts from rather than enhances the main investigation. This disappointing entry does only a superficial job of bringing the reader inside today's Russia. Hopefully, Smith and Renko will return to form next time.

Starred review from August 1, 2010

Arkady Renko's reward for his investigative prowess described in five previous novels (from Gorky Park to Stalin's Ghost) is pathetic--he's about to be cashiered from his job as a cop in Moscow. He and his alcoholic detective buddy Viktor find a lovely young woman dead in a filthy trailer in Three Stations, a crime-ridden transportation center. The fate of one prostitute, however young or beautiful, is a trivial matter to their boss, so the investigation is squelched. Renko forges on stubbornly and develops clues that point to a serial killer on the loose. At the same time, Zhenya, Renko's solitary protegee, is embroiled in the kidnapping of another prostitute's infant. At Three Stations these two grim story arcs converge, and Renko's bravery, tenacity, and sheer intelligence are burnished to a warm glow in this compact yet deeply textured and finely written descent into Moscow's lower depths. VERDICT Fans everywhere will be eager to get the latest installment in the Renko saga, a terrific oeuvre for readers in every public library. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/10.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2010
Who wears the thorny crown of the worlds most browbeaten sleuth? Heres one vote for the Russian candidate, the long-suffering Arkady Renko, who has drawn the short straw through 30 years of his troubled countrys bloodstained history (beginning with Gorky Park in 1981). It hasnt gotten any better for Arkady in post-Soviet Russia. Under suspension and soon to be dismissed from the police (capitalist bureaucrats are every bit as toxic as their socialist brethren), Arkady soldiers on, investigating crimes that no one wants solved. This time its a missing baby and a serial killer who preys on elongated women, willowy dancers who, in the killers twisted mind, epitomize (along with financiers traveling in wolf packs and dung beetles rolling dollar bills) the amorality of the contemporary Russian landscape. The investigation serves as a grand tour of the new Russia, from a billionaires fair, where, for a mere $44,000, one can buy an 1802 Bordeaux left behind by Napoleon as Moscow burned, to the nooks and crannies of the infamous Three Stations, the Moscow terminus of three train lines, which serves as home to all variety of homeless children, prostitutes, and drug dealers. The graying, sleep-deprived Arkady navigates it all, perpetually feeling as if he were a small boat on a large sea. But small boats sometimes stay afloat, even when they seem doomed to sink. No one beats Cruz Smith at portraying the hopelessness of modern life while also showing how sometimes it is cynicism that keeps our humanity alive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)