Arkady Renko
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Arkady Renko is a detective character found in six of Martin Cruz Smith's books. He is cynical, distrusting, and most definitely and defiantly Russian.
In Gorky Park, the first novel, he is a chief investigator for the Soviet Militsiya in Moscow, where he is in charge of homicide investigations. In the sequels, he takes on roles varying from militiaman to worker on a fish processing ship in the arctic.
Born into the nomenklatura, his father (an important military man) sees Arkady as a bitter failure for choosing the simple life of policeman over a military career in the Red Army, or even a career in the Communist Party. Wary of the official lies of Soviet society, he exposes corruption and dishonesty on the part of influential and well-protected members of the elite, regardless of the consequences. When exposed to Western capitalist society, he finds it to be equally corrupt and returns to Russia. Yet, despite himself, he manages to come off with a show of compassion and hope for the future.
The first three books published between 1981 and 1992 form a trilogy culminating in the fall of the Soviet Union, at the August Coup in 1991. The first book took place in Soviet Russia, the second on a Soviet fishing ship in the Bering sea, and the third in almost-post-Soviet Russia and Germany. The fourth and fifth books, published between 1999 and 2004, took place in Cuba and post-Soviet Ukraine (respectively).
[edit] List of books
With years of publication.
- Gorky Park (1981)
- Polar Star (1989)
- Red Square (1992)
- Havana Bay (1999)
- Wolves Eat Dogs (2004)
- Stalin's Ghost (2007)
[edit] See also
- Gorky Park, a 1983 film based on the first novel
