Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith

When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries. In this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world-and a reason to relish his own life again. Editorial Reviews IRRESISTIBLE . . . THE PLOT HAS PLENTY OF TWISTS. . . . THE CLIMAX IS WONDERFULLY PACED . . . SIZZLE[S] WITH AN AUTHENTICITY THAT IS RARE INDEED. -USA Today RIPE WITH THE RHYTHMS AND TROPICAL HEAT OF MODERN-DAY CUBA . . . Another fine entry in an enjoyable series of spy novels . . . The year's steamiest read. -The Wall Street Journal A SUPERBLY WRITTEN THRILLER . . . Smith's best Arkady Renko novel since Gorky Park . . . Smith, like his peers, John le Carr and Walter Mosley, writes novels that transcend any genre. -The Denver Post - From the Publisher After a few uneven novels, Martin Cruz Smith has plucked Arkady Renko, the hero of Gorky Park, Polar Star and Red Square, out of a seven-year freeze to take on the baddies once again. By sending Detective Renko to Havana to identify the body of his old friend Sergei Pribluda, Smith sets himself a considerable challenge: Not only must he provide the sophisticated whirls of intrigue for which Gorky Park is famous; he has to make the country seem real from a Russian's perspective. Arkady has to assimilate language, customs and even a little Cuban forensicology at a dizzying rate. But the tropical locations of Havana Bay reward both the author - who meets the challenge by grounding the book with precise, credible detail - and his inexhaustible protagonist. A cabal of Cuban police officers wants to prevent Arkady from identifying the body, and, if possible, to prevent him from going home alive. Only one officer, a single mother named Ofelia Osorio, comes to his assistance, and together the two try to get to the heart of an international conspiracy of venal, murderous thugs. Their love affair is as predictable as a car collision on the local news - and, as far as the writing is concerned, just as disastrous. He was in her and she wrapped herself around him. Her tongue was sweet, her back hard, and where he joined her she was endlessly deep. Or another clunker: Outside, he heard the ocean say, This is the wave that will sweep away the sand, topple the buildings and flood the streets. This is the wave. This is the wave. Well, look out, Miami! Happily, Smith has a more delicate touch with the rest of the novel. He takes the reader along with Arkady on a hairpin-curve tour through the topics of Russo-Cuban relations, Santeria and the local conventions of hustling with the unsentimental deftness of a seasoned guide. Smith, like other Cold War writers, has had some difficulty in the past few years finding the emerging markets for intrigue. His 1992 novel Red Square was an interesting but shallow dive into Moscow's organized crime problem; his most recent novel, Rose, was an ambitious piece of historical fiction about the perils of coal mining in England. So while the art of John Le Carre, an acknowledged master, has found new outlets in such novels as The Tailor of Panama, Smith's writing hasn't suffered much, but it hasn't excelled, either. Now it has. Though the author may not have a deft hand with his love scenes, what has love got to do with the spy business, anyhow? - Salon - Craig Offman Literate and exciting. - Newsweek ...[H]is earnest unsentimentality and calm tenaciousness on the hunt are what make Renko one of the most interesting detectives in modern fiction. What a clever stroke for Smith to dispatch him to Havanawhere sentimentality and passion are in rare abundance. -The New York Times Book Review - Carl Hiassen Havana Bay marks the fourth appearance -- and the first in nearly seven years -- of Martin Cruz Smith's exemplary Russian investigator, Arkady Renko. Renko, who was first seen in Smith's landmark suspense novel, Gorky Park , is a battered, world-weary survivor of the recent series of upheavals that have shattered Russian society. As Havana Bay opens, his life has reached its lowest ebb yet. He has lost the great love of his life, the former dissident Irina Asanova, to an absurd and heartbreaking accident, and has just been called to Cuba to identify the body of a long-time comrade. The comrade in question, Sergei Prebluda, is the former KGB agent who was Renko's nemesis and savior in Gorky Park. Prebluda, ostensibly serving as Russia's sugar attach in Cuba, has disappeared, and a body believed to be his has washed up in Havana Bay. Renko refuses to make a positive identification, partly because the decomposing body is literally unrecognizable, and partly to goad the Cuban authorities into actively investigating the circumstances surrounding Prebluda's disappearance. Shortly after this refusal, Renko himself is attacked under ironic circumstances: He is attempting suicide when a Cuban thug assaults him with a knife. Acting reflexively, Renko kills his assailant with the weapon he has planned to use on himself. From this point on, he is relentlessly absorbed in a complex investigation that opens a window onto life in modern Cuba, and that provides Renko with the stimulus he needs to reconnect with the world. Following in Prebluda's footsteps, Renko -- aided by a beautiful, and beautifully characterized, Cuban detective named Ofelia Osorio -- gradually uncovers an assortment of schemes, scams, and conspiracies involving an international cabal known as the Havana Yacht Club. Headed by an expatriate American millionaire and populated by a variety of fugitives, patriots, and political opportunists, the Yacht Club stands at the center of a labyrinthine plot that begins with the mystery of Sergei Prebluda's fate and widens to encompass the paranoid designs of El Commandante himself: Fidel Castro. Havana Bay provides further evidence that Smith is one of the most polished, exacting stylists working today, in or out of the thriller genre. He drives his complex plot steadily forward through a clean, clear, richly-nuanced prose that never allows itself a moment's imprecision. The quality of the writing is reason enough to read this book, but there are other, equally compelling reasons. One is Smith's flawless, often astonishing, sense of place. His portrait of Havana, with its complex mixture of cynicism and idealism, beauty and squalor, revolutionary politics and Caribbean-style paganism, is as colorful and convincing as the lovingly rendered Moscow of Gorky Park . Another reason lies in Smith's continually evolving presentation of his central character, Arkady Renko. Renko has emerged as one of the great characters of modern suspense fiction, as memorable, in his way, as John Le Carr's George Smiley or P. D. James's Adam Dalgliesh. Stubborn, vulnerable, and ironic, Renko is a natural outsider who has survived the barbarities of the Soviet regime with honor and humanity intact. A born investigator, he is driven by the need for clarity and closure. A man of deep feelings and complicated loyalties, his life has been shaped by the depth of his passion for a woman who has died. He is a genuine, three-dimensional creation, and it is, as always, a pleasure to renew his acquaintance. Smith is not a prolific writer -- Havana Bay is only the sixth novel he has published since Gorky Park appeared in 1981 -- but his books are always meticulously crafted, always worth the wait. His audience appears to have decreased over the past few years, and that's a shame, because Smith is one of those writers who keeps the standards high, who reminds us that literature and popular entertainment need not be considered mutually exclusive categories. Like the best of Smith's earlier work, Havana Bay makes literature out of the political and ideological divisions of the late 20th century. It is vital, engaging, deeply humane fiction that should not, on any account, be ignored. --Bill Sheehan - Bill Sheehan Arkady Renko, perhaps Russia's last honest policeman, has arrived in Cuba to look into the death of a colleague. Opening on a corpse scene so gruesome that Virginia's Kay Scarpetta might get the willies, the plot quickly submerges into a surreal cauldron of dark beliefs, Cuban patriotism, and American wheeling and dealing. Where in Polar Star (Random, 1989) Smith explored the coldest regions, here he glories in the Caribbean riot of sensual heat and light. There are cameo characters who capture Fidel's Cuba while Arkady struggles with the elemental challenges of survival and discovery. This novel illuminates the dark corners of a sunny Havana and deftly portrays a society trapped in a Soviet legacy of deprivation and control. Smith writes incomparably well while willing the reader to reach for understanding of the human passions he describes. Every library will soon have a long waiting list for this spectacular new book. [A BOMC main selection; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/99.]--Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal What ultimately sets the Renko books apart is the careful writing, and, more important, the knowledge of the human heart that is carried through it, through them, first to last - Chicago Tribune A richly intricate mystery made more compelling by its setting. Martin Cruz Smith's panorama is both dazzling and dead-on. - The New York Times - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt The welcome return of one of the two (along with George Smiley) most memorable characters in modern thrillers. Arkady Renko, the smart, humane, often despairing but idealistic and persistent Moscow detective introduced in Gorky Park (1981) and brought back in Polar Star (1989) and Red Square (1992) is still attempting to nail the bad guys. But in chaotic post-Soviet Russia, a world where the villains seem to be proliferating, his job keeps getting harder. Still reeling from a personal tragedy (likely to unsettle devoted readers of the series), Arkady seizes the opportunity to leave Moscow for a brief trip to Havana. His old acquaintance Pribluda, a KGB bureaucrat, has apparently turned up dead in the harbor. But is it Pribluda? The body is too decayed to allow definite identification. The Cubans, struggling to survive in a world without the Soviet Union, have a barely restrained loathing for Russians and no great interest in investigating the death. Arkady, who's contemplating suicide and feeling useless and lost, is energized-hours after having entered Cuba-by an attempt on his life. He manages to kill his attacker, thereby becoming a figure of considerable interest to the small Russian diplomatic community and various factions in the Cuban government. With the help of Ofelia Osorio, a bright, competent, maverick policewoman, Arkady begins to sort out the tangled threads of the case. Smith has always demonstrated a genius for detail, and his powers are working at their peak here; his portraits of a threadbare, vibrant Havana, the various classes in Castro's classless Cuba, and the resilient, sardonic Cuban response to an impoverished existence, are vivid, assured, andconvincing. Smith has also always had a genius for complex conspiracies, and the one that Arkady and Ofelia uncover is typically audacious and believable. The climax, as Arkady struggles for his life in the waters of Havana Bay, is masterfully paced. A strong, satisfying addition to one of the most memorable and idiosyncratic series of modern thrillers. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; Author tour) - Kirkus Reviews This foray into the murky world of Havana, Cuba, follows Russian investigator Arkady Renko on a convoluted search for the circumstances of the death of a former KGB agent. Narrator Frank Muller's skill with atmosphere is masterfully employed. Martin Cruz Smith and Muller make a rich, heady combination. Portraying a Cuba where the line between real and ridiculous is very finely drawn, Muller allows listeners to be woven into a web of intrigue and black magic. Like Renko, the listener is also acutely observant of details and nuances. Not for the inattentive, HAVANA BAY can be savored at levels of sheer descriptive beauty or tangled complexity. A rare treat. R.F.W. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award AudioFile, Portland, Maine - DEC/JAN 00 - AudioFile