STALIN'S GHOST
Martin Cruz Smith
Simon & Schuster
Thriller
Hardcover: 0743276728
Paperback: 9780743276733

• Read an Excerpt

Twenty-six years after the introduction of Arkady Renko in GORKY PARK, he has yet to endear himself to his superiors. And he’s been through a few during those years. No one quite knows how to handle him. Brilliant though he is, with a fine reputation for clearing cases, his downside is that he’s highly unpredictable and eminently unmanageable.

Having been given an assignment well beneath his rank as Senior Investigator, Renko goes through the motions of trying to figure out who is appearing as Stalin on the train platform. He doesn’t really care, but that is the assignment Prosecutor Zurin gave him. What he really cares about is Detective Nikolai Isakov and his partner, Marat Urman. The trail Renko has been following leads him to believe that they are involved in murder-for-hire plots. Plus, he sees a possible link to other deaths, both ancient and recent. A Stalin impostor on the last train of the night just doesn’t strike Renko as important; it strikes him as busywork designed to thwart his investigation, for Isakov has become a popular candidate in the upcoming election. When Renko gets stern orders to lay off, he knows he’s on the right track.

Now Renko’s lover, Eva, has defected to Isakov’s side. Renko doesn’t know what went wrong, but for now he is more concerned about Isakov’s role in recent Moscow murders that may be tied to the Chechen war. His motives, though, come under question. “Ask yourself what you’re after, Isakov or Eva?” Is Renko envious of the man’s success, is he jealous, or does he truly want to stop a monster?

Shortly before Eva goes missing, Zhenya, a boy Renko has grudgingly taken under his wing, disappears with his chessboard. It’s happened before; Zhenya goes in search of a good match, for his abilities in the game are extraordinary. Aside from chess, he’s a kid prone to sullenness and hero worship. If Renko fails to live up to Zhenya’s image of him, he well may transfer his allegiances elsewhere. That could mean grave danger --- for Renko as well as Zhenya.

While trying to find Eva and Zhenya, Renko runs into a situation he doesn’t come out of well. In his effort to survive, his mind dredges up old --- and very bad --- memories of his father. The general worked at Stalin’s side, as brutal as the famous man himself. Now Renko tries to come to grips with his past as he works to make a future for himself. With his life in a delicate balance, Prosecutor Zurin, more than eager to ship him away somewhere, gives him a choice of places for a peaceful convalescence. Renko chooses Tver, an unpleasant community a short distance from Moscow. It is also the community that Isakov is living in.

In a country ravaged by wars, mass graves are a reminder of human atrocities. For disparate reasons, they are searched out and unearthed. There exist two loosely formed groups of excavators: The Red Diggers, with the noble purpose of restoring a good name to the soldiers wrongly accused of desertion and/or treason, and the Black Diggers, who simply want to profit from the loot among the bones. Such a site is found near Tver, the scene of heavy fighting during World War II. Renko and the Diggers find more than they went looking for.

STALIN'S GHOST is a fast-paced story told from beginning to end, without the contrived twists and unlikely surprises many of today’s authors seem to hold sacred. Now, more than two-and-a-half decades after meeting Arkady Renko, he is an even more interesting character, living up to the promise that he first showed in GORKY PARK. Martin Cruz Smith deserves high accolades for his newest in the series.

   --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

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