David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "mysteries"
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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Why Read SOLDIER'S GAP?
1. It’s mystical. Lots of stuff in there about the Mescalero Indians (who believe in ghosts), although it’s set in Minnesota.
2. Theme: There are lots of them, unusual for a mystery novel, but I guess the main one is that good kids fall through the cracks and often seek advice from people they consider cool rather than their parents or their teachers.
3. Characterization: Some editors recommend keeping the number down to around a dozen or so, but I’d say I must have over a hundred in SOLDIER’S GAP, if you want to count the dogs and other animals.
4. The reviewers say it's really funny. A murder mystery shouldn’t be funny? Who says? Donald Westlake is funny. Ed McBain is funny. Even Stephen King is funny. Anyway, that’s the compliment I get most often in Amazon reviews. The relationship between protagonist Dave Jenkins and Mingo Jones, the Mescalero night deputy is especially droll.
5. There are some strong women characters for you ladies. The mayor of the town is a woman, and when she says jump, the men say, “How high?” Dave Jenkins’s girlfriend plays shortstop for his softball team, and she’s the best player on the team. She's also a member of the volunteer fire department.
6. There’s a boy genius for you Harry Potter fans; he helps Dave Jenkins solve the murder of the local high school principal. He's also in love with one of the murder suspects.
7. Unless you’re really quick, you won’t be able to figure out who done it until the murderer is actually apprehended, and there are at least a dozen suspects, including the school superintendent who was having an affair with the principal’s wife.
8. Lots of sub plots. The sheriff, Harry Kline, can’t do his job anymore and he tells terrible jokes and smokes too much. His main competition is Dave Jenkins, who, as I said, dates his daughter. Dave is also still in love with his high school sweetheart.
9. The story is set in the Red River Valley, sugar beet country for those of you who know Minnesota. The river also runs north which is even stranger. The town also has an odd name, SOLDIER, named after the civil war soldiers, including Colonel Colvill, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg (poetic license) who settled the town. There’s a weird statue of him in the town square whose eyes seems to follow you around.
10. Lots of Minnesota curiosities. We have 10,000 lakes, an Indian heritage (Ojibwas and Sioux), lots of Germans and Scandinavians and weird accents. The stuff in “Fargo” isn’t too far wrong.
Anyway, thanks for tolerating my self promotion, and if you’ve got the time, please read the reviews at Amazon.com.
2. Theme: There are lots of them, unusual for a mystery novel, but I guess the main one is that good kids fall through the cracks and often seek advice from people they consider cool rather than their parents or their teachers.
3. Characterization: Some editors recommend keeping the number down to around a dozen or so, but I’d say I must have over a hundred in SOLDIER’S GAP, if you want to count the dogs and other animals.
4. The reviewers say it's really funny. A murder mystery shouldn’t be funny? Who says? Donald Westlake is funny. Ed McBain is funny. Even Stephen King is funny. Anyway, that’s the compliment I get most often in Amazon reviews. The relationship between protagonist Dave Jenkins and Mingo Jones, the Mescalero night deputy is especially droll.
5. There are some strong women characters for you ladies. The mayor of the town is a woman, and when she says jump, the men say, “How high?” Dave Jenkins’s girlfriend plays shortstop for his softball team, and she’s the best player on the team. She's also a member of the volunteer fire department.
6. There’s a boy genius for you Harry Potter fans; he helps Dave Jenkins solve the murder of the local high school principal. He's also in love with one of the murder suspects.
7. Unless you’re really quick, you won’t be able to figure out who done it until the murderer is actually apprehended, and there are at least a dozen suspects, including the school superintendent who was having an affair with the principal’s wife.
8. Lots of sub plots. The sheriff, Harry Kline, can’t do his job anymore and he tells terrible jokes and smokes too much. His main competition is Dave Jenkins, who, as I said, dates his daughter. Dave is also still in love with his high school sweetheart.
9. The story is set in the Red River Valley, sugar beet country for those of you who know Minnesota. The river also runs north which is even stranger. The town also has an odd name, SOLDIER, named after the civil war soldiers, including Colonel Colvill, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg (poetic license) who settled the town. There’s a weird statue of him in the town square whose eyes seems to follow you around.
10. Lots of Minnesota curiosities. We have 10,000 lakes, an Indian heritage (Ojibwas and Sioux), lots of Germans and Scandinavians and weird accents. The stuff in “Fargo” isn’t too far wrong.
Anyway, thanks for tolerating my self promotion, and if you’ve got the time, please read the reviews at Amazon.com.
