Arkady Renko: 26 years later, he's still on the job

America's favorite Russian detective chases 'Stalin's Ghost' in a new novel by Martin Cruz Smith

from the July 3, 2007 edition

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This time around it's an investigation into reports that people are seeing Stalin's ghost on the Moscow metro. A ridiculous affair, everyone agrees, "a matter we may not even want on the books," says Renko's boss, but still, one that merits "a humane, informal inquiry by a veteran."

So our veteran heads down the subway stairs (where iPod cords now dangle from passengers' ears) and gets to work. But Stalin's isn't the only ghost he encounters.

Memories of his father, General Kyril Renko ("a talented butcher, not a sensitive soul at all" and a crony of Stalin's) trouble Arkady throughout the novel, as do concerns about Zhenya, the teenage chess prodigy he has unofficially adopted.

And as is the case throughout the Renko series – despite the neatly crafted plotline Smith spins for us, which includes a blood-soaked World War II battlefield and a pair of corrupt detectives who are also veterans of the war in Chechnya – in the end it's the detective himself (and the country he loves in spite of it all) that intrigue us most.

Will Renko grasp a moment of happiness? And if so, does that mean there's a spark of hope for the new Russia?

It seems incredible now to remember that Smith's first publishers passed on "Gorky Park" because he refused to turn his star detective into an American. Little did they imagine how heartily Western readers would embrace a nuanced Russian hero who could take them into his mysterious country through the back door.

Today, tourists are free to enter Russia by any door they like. But that doesn't necessarily render the country any less mysterious or the solitary, tenacious investigator any less appealing as a guide.

Twenty-six years have passed, but Arkady Renko's work is far from done.

• Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments to Marjorie Kehe.

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