David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "martin-cruz-smith"
TATIANA
Tatiana by Martin Cruz SmithMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
At the beginning of TATIANA, a bicycle racing interpreter who is conversant in several languages is murdered, but that’s not the case Arkady Renko is interested in. Journalist Tatiana Petrovna, a determined young woman bent on rooting out corruption in high places, falls from a sixth floor apartment, to her death and the police are convinced it was a suicide. Arkady doesn’t believe it.
Arkady Renko is pretty close to being clinically depressed. His adopted son Zhenya wants to join the army. Zhenya is a chess genius and Arkady is convinced he can do better; Arkady won’t sign the papers to allow Zhenya to enlist. Meanwhile Arkady’s on and off girlfriend, Anya, seems to determined to follow Tatiana’s dangerous mission as a journalist, flirting with a mafia boss.
The whole case revolves around a notebook left behind by the interpreter; it’s not in code; it seems to be a set of doodles the interpreter used to stimulate his memory about a job he’d been working on.
Meanwhile mafia leader Grisha Grigorenko is also murdered, and his son seems to think he should be the heir apparent. The interpreter murder, Tatiana’s so-called suicide and the mafia killing seem related. In Renko’s Russia, the mafia plays a much greater role than the media has led us to believe.
Arkady gets hold of the notebook, but can’t make much sense of it, but Zhenya takes it on as a challenge, especially after a young girl beats him at chess, and he wants to impress her.
Renko really doesn’t have any authority to investigate anything, but his alcoholic friend Victor, who like Sherlock Holmes, only gets high when he’s not on a case, reluctantly helps. They center on Kaliningrad where Tatiana’s sister lives. Kaliningrad is a dump, except for its depleted amber mines, and Arkady believes they have something to do with what‘s going on.
A good theme for this book would be “nothing is as it seems”; once we move toward the end, Martin Cruz Smith throws us a few curve balls, or twists in the literary vernacular. I’ve read all of the Arkady Renko mysteries, and this one moves along at a pretty rapid pace; there’s even room for optimism at the end, somewhat unusual for a Renko novel.
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The Farm
Tom Rob Smith is the author of CHILD 44, one of the better thrillers I’ve ready in recent years. It was about a Russian serial killer, apparently based on a real case. Since then he’s written three more novels, two of them part of the Russian trilogy: THE SECRET SPEECH and AGENT SIX. I read them all.
THE FARM is a departure for Smith in a big way. According to Smith’s bio he has a Swedish mother and a British father. So does Daniel the protagonist of the new novel. Daniel’s parents have retired to a farm in Sweden, and Daniel is searching for a way to tell them that he’s gay, living with his partner, in Mark’s apartment when he receives a phone call from his father. His mother has been released from a mental hospital and is headed his way. She’s been acting strangely for a while, writing nonsense on the walls of the farm house.
During most of the story, we hear Tilde’s side of the story. She has a satchel in which she keeps the evidence of her descent into so-called madness. She’s positive she can convince Daniel that she’s the victim of a conspiracy to shut her up. We discover that his parents had very little money, having lost most of their savings in the recession, making bad real estate investments. The farm was cheap and Tilde had plans to attract tourists with salmon from the river and produce from a huge vegetable garden, but a land-hungry neighbor, Hakan, wants their land, and Chris, her husband, seems inclined to sell it to him for three times what they paid for it. Hakan has an adopted daughter, Mia, whom he adopted from Africa. Tilde believes Mia was a sex slave, and so were other adopted children in the area. She believes Mia was murdered when she threatened to tell the police. Amazingly she believes Chris is part of the sex ring, as is Hakan, the town mayor, a police detective, and the psychiatrist who treated her. Daniel doubts his gentle and kind father could ever change so much in a matter of months.
So . . . we’re left with the question, “Is Tilde telling the truth or is she delusional?” She seems to have all of her ducks in a row. She insists on presenting her evidence chronologically, and she backs her case up with seemingly concrete evidence. Then Chris calls to say he’s coming to London. Tilde has predicted he would.
As a novelist myself, I have to give credit to Smith’s originality; he doesn’t persist in his bread and butter Russian thriller series. This effort is totally original. I also had no idea what was going to happen in the climax. As an inveterate mystery fan, I usually know long before the denouement. I first chose Smith as an alternative to Martin Cruz Smith, as I was a big GORKY PARK fan, and I’ve read all of Cruz’s novels since, but I wasn’t disappointed to see Tom Rob Smith go in a different direction.
THE FARM is a departure for Smith in a big way. According to Smith’s bio he has a Swedish mother and a British father. So does Daniel the protagonist of the new novel. Daniel’s parents have retired to a farm in Sweden, and Daniel is searching for a way to tell them that he’s gay, living with his partner, in Mark’s apartment when he receives a phone call from his father. His mother has been released from a mental hospital and is headed his way. She’s been acting strangely for a while, writing nonsense on the walls of the farm house.
During most of the story, we hear Tilde’s side of the story. She has a satchel in which she keeps the evidence of her descent into so-called madness. She’s positive she can convince Daniel that she’s the victim of a conspiracy to shut her up. We discover that his parents had very little money, having lost most of their savings in the recession, making bad real estate investments. The farm was cheap and Tilde had plans to attract tourists with salmon from the river and produce from a huge vegetable garden, but a land-hungry neighbor, Hakan, wants their land, and Chris, her husband, seems inclined to sell it to him for three times what they paid for it. Hakan has an adopted daughter, Mia, whom he adopted from Africa. Tilde believes Mia was a sex slave, and so were other adopted children in the area. She believes Mia was murdered when she threatened to tell the police. Amazingly she believes Chris is part of the sex ring, as is Hakan, the town mayor, a police detective, and the psychiatrist who treated her. Daniel doubts his gentle and kind father could ever change so much in a matter of months.
So . . . we’re left with the question, “Is Tilde telling the truth or is she delusional?” She seems to have all of her ducks in a row. She insists on presenting her evidence chronologically, and she backs her case up with seemingly concrete evidence. Then Chris calls to say he’s coming to London. Tilde has predicted he would.
As a novelist myself, I have to give credit to Smith’s originality; he doesn’t persist in his bread and butter Russian thriller series. This effort is totally original. I also had no idea what was going to happen in the climax. As an inveterate mystery fan, I usually know long before the denouement. I first chose Smith as an alternative to Martin Cruz Smith, as I was a big GORKY PARK fan, and I’ve read all of Cruz’s novels since, but I wasn’t disappointed to see Tom Rob Smith go in a different direction.
The Siberian Dilemma
Usually Arkady Renko is dealing with some non-political skulduggery in the Russian capital, Moskow, working as an inspector for the political hack of a prosecutor.
But Arkady is in love, and his girlfriend Tatiana Petrovna, a renowned journalist, isn't answering his phone calls or his text messages. She's in Siberia trying to figure out whether noted dissident, Mikail Kusnetsov, is the real deal or just another Putin enabler. Kusnetsov has spent five years in prison, testifying to the veracity of his claims. When Arkady arrives in Irkutsk he joins hands with a fellow passenger who informs Arkady he will be his factotum, or jack of all trades. Bolot is a native Buryat, or Siberian native and he knows Lake Baikal, where most of the action takes place, like the back of his hand. He can even tell when the ice is about to crack and plunge them to their deaths. There's another oil baron or oligarch, if you will, who's supposed to be in league with Kusnetsov named Benz, but Benz thinks Kusnetsov is not the person he claims to be and is stealing from him. He has one of Kusnetsov's wells capped with cement.
Bears are also central to the action and Benz convinces Arkady, Bolot and Tatiana to go with him on a hunt near Lake Baikal where Kusnetsov's well was capped. The bears are treated like white tail deer in Minnesota; when they begin to become a hindrance, the herd is thinned. But you don't want to make one of them mad. They are faster than human beings and really quick. Arkady's father has cautioned him to play dead when confronted with a vicious bear. That advice will come in handy.
The political situation is surprisingly open and on the mark. Usually in a fictional account, Putin wouldn't be called Putin, but in this novel, Putin owns four estates and two ocean going yachts. I was tempted to search the Internet, but it's not surprising since the Russian people demonstrated when they found out that Medvedev, the prime minister, had an estate that make Versailles look ramshackle.
Okay, there are two more characters you need to know about: Zurin, the prosecutor who turns up for the funeral of one of the oligarchs, is the first. He hates Arkady because Arkady is an honest man, but Arkady has something on Zurin; he knows Zurin has a Cuban mistress, apparently a no-no in Putin world. And we need to know that Zurin is threatening Arkady's chess genius ward and his girlfriend unless Arkady is willing to kill the dissident oligarch. This threat is also pretty realistic; in real world Russia, the number one dissident was charged with a trumped up crime and not allowed to run against Putin in the last election. He has also been known to eliminate critical journalists, former spies (see a recent English incident) and opponents of his puppet president in the Ukraine. In that case he used a plutonium cocktail. I don't mean to say Putin does this stuff personally, but he puts out the word, and it gets done.
This is a short book, only 274 pages, and it comes to an abrupt ending, but the Siberian setting, the unique factotum character, Arkady's Tatiana, and the world of the Siberian oligarchs should make worthwhile reading for Arkady Renko fans.
But Arkady is in love, and his girlfriend Tatiana Petrovna, a renowned journalist, isn't answering his phone calls or his text messages. She's in Siberia trying to figure out whether noted dissident, Mikail Kusnetsov, is the real deal or just another Putin enabler. Kusnetsov has spent five years in prison, testifying to the veracity of his claims. When Arkady arrives in Irkutsk he joins hands with a fellow passenger who informs Arkady he will be his factotum, or jack of all trades. Bolot is a native Buryat, or Siberian native and he knows Lake Baikal, where most of the action takes place, like the back of his hand. He can even tell when the ice is about to crack and plunge them to their deaths. There's another oil baron or oligarch, if you will, who's supposed to be in league with Kusnetsov named Benz, but Benz thinks Kusnetsov is not the person he claims to be and is stealing from him. He has one of Kusnetsov's wells capped with cement.
Bears are also central to the action and Benz convinces Arkady, Bolot and Tatiana to go with him on a hunt near Lake Baikal where Kusnetsov's well was capped. The bears are treated like white tail deer in Minnesota; when they begin to become a hindrance, the herd is thinned. But you don't want to make one of them mad. They are faster than human beings and really quick. Arkady's father has cautioned him to play dead when confronted with a vicious bear. That advice will come in handy.
The political situation is surprisingly open and on the mark. Usually in a fictional account, Putin wouldn't be called Putin, but in this novel, Putin owns four estates and two ocean going yachts. I was tempted to search the Internet, but it's not surprising since the Russian people demonstrated when they found out that Medvedev, the prime minister, had an estate that make Versailles look ramshackle.
Okay, there are two more characters you need to know about: Zurin, the prosecutor who turns up for the funeral of one of the oligarchs, is the first. He hates Arkady because Arkady is an honest man, but Arkady has something on Zurin; he knows Zurin has a Cuban mistress, apparently a no-no in Putin world. And we need to know that Zurin is threatening Arkady's chess genius ward and his girlfriend unless Arkady is willing to kill the dissident oligarch. This threat is also pretty realistic; in real world Russia, the number one dissident was charged with a trumped up crime and not allowed to run against Putin in the last election. He has also been known to eliminate critical journalists, former spies (see a recent English incident) and opponents of his puppet president in the Ukraine. In that case he used a plutonium cocktail. I don't mean to say Putin does this stuff personally, but he puts out the word, and it gets done.
This is a short book, only 274 pages, and it comes to an abrupt ending, but the Siberian setting, the unique factotum character, Arkady's Tatiana, and the world of the Siberian oligarchs should make worthwhile reading for Arkady Renko fans.
