Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6362 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Daily Echo
'I enjoyed the crafted plot and outcome, turning the final page with a sigh'

South Wales Argus
'Another cracking story...Smith's bleak, atmospheric thrillers brilliantly give life to Renko and the other people in his world'

Daily Mirror
'Renko is as compelling as ever.'

Customer Reviews

Well-written, but the plot could have been stronger.....
I like Martin Cruz Smith's writing and I have enjoyed prior novels with Senior Investigator Arkady Renko as the lead character.

In common with the prequels, the book is instructive on life in Russia and contains some rich observations. I liked lines like "as he was leaving Moscow and driving into Russia.....".

The plot is not all that deep but takes Renko to Tver and very nearly sees him killed. I found the book to be populated with strange scenarios, relationships and interactions as Renko tries to solve a couple of mysteries. The relevance of a couple of Americans who played bit parts still escapes me and the Stalin's Ghost angle in the metro seems to have done more for others than it did for me.

Here too, Renko struggles with his own demons and his relationships with his adopted son and partner. To get the most out of this book, I suspect a reader would need to have built a strong relationship with Renko from prior novels.

For whatever reason, I judged this book first as crime novel and I didn't feel it was as strong as other Cruz Smith books I have read. 7/10

Pleasantly surprising
Having never read a Martin Cruz Smith book, but having been impressed by the film of Gorky Park I actually bought this book in desperation. I was travelling back from Istanbul to the UK via Munich and had run out of books to read before reaching Istanbul airport. A quick trawl of the bookshop persuaded me to purchase Stalin's Ghost.

What impressed me was the quality of the writing as much as anything. Phrases like "Time nibbled away at the afternoon" and "Night crouched outside the casino" show a real talent for writing. Add to this a densely plotted thriller in modern Russian and it was an excellent page-turner.

I finished it in "one" go - Istanbul to Munich, 4 hours in Munich, Munich to Manchester and then a 25-minute queue for passport control. I read the last page walking through the baggage reclaim section. The fact that I was really tired (early start, long day, two time zone changes) underlines the quality of the book - I could not stop reading it. The author has a clear eye for the detail of post-communist Russia and the spectre of Stalin pervades the novel.

I'll probably buy the other Renko books now, perhaps even Gorky Park - having seen the film it will be interesting to see how the book holds up.

"In Arkady's experience, when the snow melted, bodies would be discovered. In Moscow, that was spring."
In his sixth Arkady Renko novel in twenty-six years, Martin Cruz Smith continues the character development of the aging Renko, a complex police investigator with an inherent honesty that serves as a barrier to advancement in contemporary Moscow. With the downfall of communism, Russia is now filled with corrupt politicians, organized crime lords, police acting as killers for hire, and a pervading uncertainty about the future. With every man for himself, it is no wonder that Renko, at the mercy of higher authorities in the force and unable to investigate the corruption he sees, has developed a healthy cynicism and pragmatism about life.

As the Moscow winter wanes, a mass grave from the mid-1940s is found at a construction site, obviously a place for the disposal of those executed under Stalin's rule, with the help of Renko's father, one of Stalin's trusted deputies. No modern investigation results, and no one is surprised. The inaction is all part of life in this city where the past and the present come together in a whirlpool which sucks the life out of its citizens. When the ghost of Stalin is seen wandering the subway, Renko is assigned to this low level case. As many ordinary citizens long for the "good old days," Stalinism is on the rise, and Police Inspector Nicolai Isakov, a killer for hire, is running for public office on a Stalinist platform.

A wartime "hero" for his actions as a Black Beret during the Chechen war, Isakov has never received medals or promotion for his behavior, and Renko is curious about why. When the other Black Berets who served with Isakov begin to die violent deaths, Renko begins a surreptitious investigation and finds himself fighting for his life. His personal relationships are not improved when his lover, Eva, begins sleeping with Isakov, and Zhenya, the twelve-year-old street orphan to whom Renko has offered a home, disappears, presumably to hustle at chess.

Cruz Smith's immensely satisfying plotting grows naturally from life in Moscow and its values and mores (for good and for evil), and when dramatic and gory scenes of violence arise, they do so within the context of a setting fully developed sociologically and historically. The characters are individualized and empathetic at all levels, and Arkady, who has continued to grow and change over the course of twenty-six years, still hopes that goodness will triumph, despite the country's current problems. Even secondary characters, like Zhenya become fully rounded, their motivations clear. The occasional black humor and Arkady's sardonic observations keep the reader engaged, even as the author raises questions about the future of Arkady and others like him who hope for a long-term justice. Mary Whipple