Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

A Moscow detective is sent to Chernobyl for a frightening case in the most spectacular entry yet in Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series. In his groundbreaking Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith created an iconic detective of contemporary fiction. Quietly subversive, brilliantly analytical, and haunted by melancholy, Arkady Renko survived, barely, the journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find his transformed nation just as obsessed with corruption and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case yet: the death of one of Russia's new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion-closed to the world since 1986's nuclear disaster. It is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko's journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure. Editorial Reviews Martin Cruz Smith is the master of the international thriller. - The New York Times Martin Cruz Smith and Detective Arkady Renko are irresistible. - Time An engrossing mystery with a satisfyingly slam-bang conclusion. - The Boston Herald - From the Publisher Arkady fits right in among the people of Chernobyl and the other ''black villages'' that make up the Zone of Exclusion. Old farmers, humanitarian aid workers, even the local hustlers -- they're all survivors, stubborn, stoic, cynical and yet vulnerable in equal measure. The battered but tireless Arkady, who has endured a brutal father, the loss of the woman he loved, at least one suicide attempt, a psychiatric hospitalization and much more, can relate. - The New York Times - Jonathan Mahler Smith's first Arkady Renko novel, Gorky Park, became a best seller because it offered American readers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a world closed off to them. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, it would seem that Smith had nothing left to write about. But as he proved with Red Square and Havana Bay, the new Russia offers a rich source of material (and crimes). This time cynical but honest senior investigator Renko must determine whether the defenestration death of a Russian tycoon was suicide or murder. The discovery of radioactive salt in the dead man's apartment leads Renko to the abandoned Ukrainian towns of Chernobyl and Pripyat, still dangerously contaminated 18 years after the world's deadliest nuclear accident. There he finds a ghostly world inhabited by scavengers, elderly villagers, and a small group of Russian militia and scientists. As Renko pursues his investigation, he uncovers a greater crime, the sad legacy of Soviet ineptitude and corruption. Smith's latest is filled with the same eye for detail and fully developed characters that made Gorky Park so compelling. Fans will snap up. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/04.]-Wilda Williams, Library Journal Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. - Library Journal In his first outing in five years, Arkady Renko (Havana Bay, 1999, etc.) goes to the forbidden zone around post-disaster Chernobyl, where wolves have returned. Is Russia better now? Detective Renko's Moscow doesn't seem to be. Prosecutor Zurin, to whom the widowed policeman answers, is as arbitrary and slippery as any Brezhnev era apparatchik, and the future of 11-year-old Zhenya, an orphan Renko inherited from a flighty lady friend, is as bleak as any Soviet scenario. And the murder that's just been dropped on his plate offers Renko as many opportunities to screw up his life as an old-fashioned KGB investigation. Filthy-rich businessman Pasha Ivanov either defenestrated himself or was defenestrated from his 11th- story digs, landing on, of all things, a saltshaker. And there's salt heaped all over the newly vacated apartment wherein sits Ivanov's very shaken American assistant, Bobby Hoffman. Renko's investigation is officially cut short by Prosecutor Zurin, who lets him know that what they have on the sidewalk is a suicide and that things are to be wound up quickly. But even with a totally compromised crime scene, the detective knows there's more to the story, and he obeys Hoffman's urgent plea to follow up. The trail leads to Pripyat, the abandoned and quarantined scientific city near Chernobyl that was built to house the technocrats, engineers, and scientists who created and ran the world's biggest concentration of nuclear reactors. In this weird ghost town, where one of Pasha Ivanov's vice presidents was found with his throat slashed, Renko comes upon squatters, scavengers, savage soldiers, and Eva, a strung-out but sexy physician who treats the radiation wounds of the natives whorefuse to leave. Important answers come from one of the nearby villages where old peasants, thumbing their nose at the radiation, live as they have lived for centuries. As always, Smith (December 6, 2002, etc.) imagines a Russia that is sad, broken, and, somehow, romantically irresistible. First printing of 150,000 - Kirkus Reviews Smith's latest Arkady Renko book, a solid mystery centering on Chernobyl, gives fascinating information about the disaster and what the area is like now. Henry Strozier's voice is perfect for the story: dark-toned, gravelly, with an edge of worldly wise sardonicism that never becomes unsympathetic or despairing, just like aging Moscow cop Renko. Strozier strikes the right note of wistful cynicism and humorous weariness, imbued with Renko's essential decency and doggedness. However, Strozier is not strong at different voices; while one always knows who's speaking, better differentiation would improve the listener's experience. But Renko's tone is his alone. The bottom line: Some people simply have voices you want to listen to, and Strozier is one. W.M. AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine - AUG/SEP 05 - AudioFile