Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel

Martin Cruz Smith has a very narrative and descriptive style of writing that lets you visualize the characters and their surroundings, greatly increasing the readers enjoyment. This storyline hints to supernatural overtones and is an interesting slice of modern life in Russia. Yet another high-quality read!

Martin Cruz Smith's character radiates Russian culture despite the fact the author is American born and bred.The Russian culture is harsh, and corrupt, but Renko triumphs in his investigations, possibly because of his many imperfections. I like detectives who solve cases because they're good at it although they have troubled personal lives.

I've been slowly reading all the Arkady Renko novels over the last few years, ususally about one every six months. I've found them all enjoyable, but I'd put this one up there with Gorky Park and Polar Star as one of my favorites.

Smith has done some excellent writing in the past but it seems that the Renko character has become old and stale. The plot wandered and seemed to try to hit on hot contemporary events but it just didn't work for me.

Stalin's Ghost is an intriguing and believable story set in the new Russia describing the conflicts of all the characters arising from their individual pasts carried forward inescapably into a new political dispensation.

Stalin's Ghost is an intriguing and believable story set in the new Russia describing the conflicts of all the characters arising from their individual pasts carried forward inescapably into a new political dispensation.

I've read and enjoyed them all, beginning with "Gorky Park," and for my money this is the best of the series in terms of plot, pacing and sheer writing brilliance. Renko is a morose and laconic figure, but he is far from depressing. His sense of humor and irony in the grim milieu of modern Russia make him a particularly compelling protagonist. I love this guy.

The characters are not developed. There were so many characters with long Russian names. The author would either call them by their first name and next time by their last name. They would introduce a "main character" Eva, then she disappeared and didn't turn up again until the very end. No real depth of story. I do not recommend this book.

I selected this book because the premise of the story was fascinating and the reviews were quite good. However, the continual barrage of filthy, offensive language was too distracting. While the gutter may be the reality in Russia, bombarding the reader with expletives is not necessary to tell a good story. I did not bother to finish the book. Terribly disappointing and a waste of my money.

Really, this book just stressed me out. I love the Renko novels, and consider Renko to be one of my best friends (literarily-speaking, of course), so it’s very difficult to watch him wading constantly into danger. As I wrote in my review of Wolves Eat Dogs, I care about Renko – too much, considering he’s fictional – and I would have preferred that the series end at book four, with Renko and Ofelia happy on a beach in Cuba. But no, the series continues. At least in WED, the danger was somewhat muted. There were never more than maybe one or two people trying to kill Renko, although Chernobyl radiation was a constant seething menace. But in Stalin’s Ghost, Renko is constantly facing death. The girl who played with fire and who kicked the hornet’s nest hasn’t got a patch on our dear Renko, who goes poking for trouble the way a cat tries to open closet doors: relentlessly. And he’s always going up against some of the most hyper-evil desperadoes on offer: guys who will cut off your and fry them in a pan before shoving them down your throat. It’s too much!!

So I’m only dishing out four stars this time. The writing is still great, the inventiveness divine, the research, I assume, impeccable (and at the very least, enough to mesmerize the likes of me). Still, the book doesn’t quite demonstrate the same level of awareness of Russian inner life as the other books. It’s still good in that respect, but…. but… Oh, hang it. Five stars! Who am I kidding? Cruz Smith is the master. But please, Arkady! Be careful!

No. Really, I have to take that fifth star back. Y’know what? There must be four dangerous reversals of fortune in the final 40 pages of the book, and thinking about them, I’m a touch put off. The final surprise was just one too many, and hardly credible. Eight on the old unbelievability index. And it set up an ambiguous ending. Now I have to go read the next book -- and sweat it out with my buddy Arkady yet again!

One thing that’s amusing, however, is that the book was published in 2007 and takes place around 2005 and involves a strongman populist figure trying to get power in Russia, with slimy American operators lending a hand. You’d almost think the book had been written in the last year! So, yes, I’m giving that star back for prescience! Five stars!

Martin Cruz Smith continues his novel dealing with Chernobyl - Wolves Eat Dogs - with his awkward rendition of Russian confusion about a person whose notoriety remains, but acclaim among the people diminishes: Stalin.

In most of his novels, Cruz gives a short and poignant lesson about Soviet or Russian history with tidbits which often awaken the American mind - one limited with Russian history and often that little is convoluted with our Cold War propaganda.

But, unlike those other novels, Cruz seems to either think it unnecessary (because we already know or do not need to know) that Stalin should be disfavorably looked upon for any of the following: (1) having Trotsky tracked down and killed by his agents in Mexico City in 1940; (2) engineering a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state) on the Ukraine which killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance; (3) creating the Gulag Archipelago which can only be thought of as tragical and the cause fo millions of useless deaths; (4) utilizing convict labor which amounted to millions of more deaths; (5) and continuing personal paranoia which culminated with more death.

Among the atrocities is the 70-120 a night blunt and point blank shooting of innocents by soldiers in Kiev. Akin to this, Stalin's Ghost reminisces about similar atrocities in Tver where mass grave sites are being exhumed for love of the fathers of the Great War. But, from such efforts erupts confusion, embarrassment and Stalin's true ghost.

This series commenced with Gorky Park - a great Cold War narrative with true concepts which did not dive into the depths of Hollywood-like sensationalism. It was raw and believable. It was a hit, in literature and with superstar William Hurt playing Arkady.

This book, decades later, leaves the already drop-kicked communist regime, and must depict Russia in a more western perspective. That is fine - and Wolves Eat Dogs masters that hurdle beautifully. But, this novel includes too many great stories which may be observed in non-fiction, but are too often unbelievable in fiction. Examples include an unknown child beating the best chess players in a Russian tournament; a man being shot point blank with a bullet entry wound into the brain and not dying or being permanently retarded; a woman being stabbed deeply into the abdomen and somehow not bleeding to death; and other people being roughed by black berets who somehow survive while opponents in war died in their grasps in moments.

Another sequel which suffered a similar mishap is movie's James Bond. The Sean Connery Bond walked really and encountered real perils; but, his successor Roger Moore escaped matters which even cartoon characters could not. Bond has somewhat resurfaced to realty in its latest movie - we can only hope that Cruz analogously follows Bond's lead to sobriety in fiction.

One of the better rediscoveries that I've made this year has been the novels of Martin Cruz Smith and his Russian inspector, Arkady Renko. In this, the sixth of the Renko series, we get to find out quite a bit more about Renko and his past, as well as some tantalizing hints for the future.

At the opening, Arkady Renko and his teammate, Victor, are meeting with a woman about murder. It's not a murder that Zoya Filotova saw, but rather that she wants them to murder her husband, who is evidently a brute of a man, and working hard to flitch every ruble she makes. It's an interesting case, and one that opens up a real nightmare for Renko.

For at the same time, a drunken woman has slammed a cleaver through her husband's neck during an argument. The team that has caught the case are the star performers in Moscow's investigative office, Detective Nikolai Isakov and his buddy, Marat Urman. Both of the men served in the bloody wars with the Chechens, in the same unit, and Isakov came out of the war a hero. Now he's involved with far right politics, and even worse, Renko has an even more personal score -- his lover, Eva, was mixed up with him some time ago, and there have been plenty of snide rumours that the affair is still ongoing.

To top it all off, it seems that in this New Russia of capitalist opportunity, a spectre is haunting the Metro. For Joseph Stalin has been spotted in the subways, waving to the passengers as they pass by. The political higher-ups are not at all happy about this, especially since the late dictator is starting to be remembered as a benevolent leader in the bad old Communist days by the ultraconservative factions. Again, it's Renko who has to uncover the truth of it all.

There's a would-be filmmaker who's also a pornographer; an old chess master who is helping Zhenya, the young boy that Renko has informally adopted; a matchmaking service, and finally, the riddle of a tattoo with the words "TVER," tigers and mountains -- despite the fact that the city of Tver is in a flatland without tigers or mountains. And this time, this just might be the case that will be the end of Renko, as we find out.

Whew. This is one heck of a novel, with chases over brittle ice, motorcycles, some more backstory about Zhenya that only served to make me more curious, street gangs, a decadent Russia that makes the Soviet Union look tame, and the even older Tsarist system a paradise, and all sorts of other goodies. What really got to me was that we get to have a very intimate look at the childhood of Arkady Renko, and the mystery of his parent's relationship and the tragedy that changed his life forever. This one really is haunting to read, and I could understand even more as to the relationship between Renko and Zhenya.

As with the previous novels in the series, author Martin Cruz Smith simply does not slow down the pace from start to finish. As each piece of the mystery is revealed, I found myself enthralled with the story, wanting to find out what happens next. And most of all, it's the character of Arkady Renko himself that is the most interesting -- he's a man who is very human, unlike most heroes in thrillers -- he loves a bit too much, he hurts, he takes a beating and feels it, and he has an inner, incorruptible core that has a strong sense of honour and justice that simply will not give up. Considering all of the other policemen that crowd the shelves of the local bookstores, I do have to say that Renko has become my favourite. The reader gets to know why he acts the way that he does, and what he wants -- and in the never-ending world of heroes that resemble Timex watches, I found myself actually liking Renko for who he is.

One of the big surprises of this one were the Diggers, those who are excavating the remains of both Russian and German soldiers outside of the city of Tver, and seeing that they are returned to the appropriate families and their records updated. There's an important reason to this, and I found myself very much moved by this part of the story. The Diggers are volunteers, and they spend countless hours trying to give the ceaseless dead some dignity. As to the historical reason of why this is important, the reader will discover in the story.

And there quite a few dangling threads from this novel that I hope will get fleshed out in the next novel from Martin Cruz Smith, The Golden Mile. The new Russia is fascinating to read about, and the author has done a considerable amount of research and invention to flesh out his characters and their deeds. Unlike many other thrillers, the setting feels right, and the characters are complex and compelling to read about, even the ones that are clearly corrupt and wicked. To me, that's one of the signs of a damn fine novel, and I hope that Smith will continue these stories for some time to come.

One twitch to the novel, and it's a minor one, is that the map in the front of the book of the Moscow Metro, and is labeled in Cyrillic. Fortunately, I've got enough skill with Russian to untangle it, but I suspect that other readers will find it very confusing. Still, it's not a huge problem, but it did help to visualize some of the events of the story.

As with all of the Arkady Renko novels, while this is primarily a stand-alone, I do recommend that they be read in order. There are plenty of events that happen in previous novels that have a bearing on the actions in the current story, and while the story can be enjoyed as it is, there is also a very subtle delight to being able to connect the dots as it were.

Five stars. Happily recommended.