Polar Star

Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every bit as good as I remembered. Highly recommended! I worship MCS for his grittily vivid scenes, lovable shady characters, and wonderfully surreal landscapes. (Not to mention his Russian soul!) If you haven't read Gorky Park, read that one first!

As usual, Arkady Renko is reluctant to begin a murder investigation--this time into the death of a popular young woman on board the Soviet fish-processing factory ship, the Polar Star.

As he discovers one shady operation after another--smuggling, spying, sleeping around--Renko is drawn into the intrigue as much as we are, until he can't rest without finding the answers he wants. And there is nothing we want more than for him to continue probing the mystery; though we might care a bit more for Renko's personal safety than he seems to himself.

This Renko has nothing to lose--a life of running across Siberia from the KGB, stuck gutting fish at the bottom of a factory trawler, dead to the world. He has retained his habit of wandering into dangerous places unprepared, and narrowly escaping death.

Also as usual, the people who want Renko dead turn out to the most interesting characters in the story. A powerful criminal on the ship may want to kill the investigator, but he also wants to know what happened to Zina, the murdered girl. Curiosity stays his hand more than once.

Investigator, officers, criminals and spies wander circles around each other on this small, ice-bound world in the middle of the Bering Sea. Through all this, Arkady Renko is surprised to find that he has something to live for after all.

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