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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 28 |
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still hanging in there
of TheColumnists.com
It has been, remarkably, more than a quarter century that I've been following the strange and exciting adventures of a detective named Arkady Renko, by now a rather weary and embattled searcher for truth in a land where that can get you killed quite easily.
It all began in 1981 when my wife bought me a copy of a new bestseller called "Gorky Park" by Martin Cruz Smith as a Christmas gift. My middle name wasn't "Mystery" then, although I had always loved reading them. I was then fully employed as a television columnist and the Soviet Union was still an "evil empire" in the eyes of our new president, Ronald Reagan, and his loyal followers.
I was immediately fascinated by "Gorky Park" and its hero, Detective Renko, who somehow managed to stay alive while trying to track down the killer of three people found buried under snow and ice in the dead of winter in Moscow's Gorky Park. As he pursued his investigation with dogged focus, Renko stepped on the toes of practically everybody in the Soviet bureauacracy--and they all reacted with vigor, trying to get him out of their hair.
That was a long, long time ago in terms of my life, Renko's life and life in general in what used to be the Soviet Union. In 1983, I was sent to Los Angeles to report on television directly from Hollywood and "Gorky Park" came to the screen that year in a popular and acclaimed film by Michael Apted. The "Gorky Park" movie had a screenplay by Dennis Potter, the brilliant English author of "Pennies From Heaven" and "The Singing Detective" and starred William Hurt, still a few years away from his Best Actor Academy Award, as Renko with a supporting cast that included Brian Dennehy, Lee Marvin, Ian Bannen and Alexander Knox.
But it would be a full eight years before Arkady Renko would turn up in a second book, Smith's "Polar Star," which found Renko hiding from the KGB by working on board a huge Soviet factory ship in the Bering Sea, hauling in fish off the coast of Alaska with the help of American trawlers. Glasnost and perestroika were just beginning to thaw out the Soviets, so when a woman's body is hauled up in one of the nets, who else but Detective Renko is capable of conducting the investigation?
Reading this series of novels is like taking a course in modern Russian history from a very well-informed and interesting teacher. In "Gorky Park" and "Polar Star," we see the old Soviet Union at its worst. In "Red Square" (1992), Renko returns to Moscow to resume his career, but under the often warped rules of a new Russia. In "Havana Bay" (1999), Renko is sent to Cuba to investigate the death of a Russian agent and we get an up close and personal view of how the Cuban attitude has changed toward Russians since they switched over to democracy. Then, in "Wolves Eat Dogs" (2004), Renko's investigations take him to the polluted ruins of Chenobyl, where he encounters a new breed of Russians who think their once-great nation can no longer do anything competently, so they must fend for themselves at all times.
Now in the sixth and latest Renko novel, "Stalin's Ghost" (Simon & Schuster, $26.95), our hero finds himself duelling with vicious and vengeful "patriots," who want Russia to reclaim its place as a major world power and to choose new leaders who will rule with force like the disgraced despot of Soviet-brand communism, Joseph Stalin. To me, this rings with the sound of reality--and I sometimes wonder if Russian Pres. Putin isn't already on his way to fulfilling the goals of such "patriots."
For those who haven't followed the series as faithfully as I have, it's important to know that Renko is still a widower at the start of "Stalin's Ghost," but living with Eva, the radiation-damaged physician he teamed with in "Wolves Eat Dogs," Still in the picture are Zhenya, the uncommunicative orphan boy who has become Renko's responsibility, and Victor, his loyal aide who seems dedicated to the cause of drinking up all vodka still available in Russia.
When Renko begins to suspect that two other detectives--both military heroes from the civil war in Chechnya--are committing murders rather than solving them, his search for truth gets him into serious trouble with his higher-ups. He's taken off his murder investigations and assigned to find out why the "ghost" of Stalin has suddenly started to appear to late-night passengers at a Moscow subway station.
What he discovers isn't just disturbing to Renko; it's nearly fatal. For a time, you may believe Smith has decided to end his series at Renko's graveside. But this hardy hero still has miles to go before his end--and he'll be anxious to take care of business in his usual style before saying his final farewell to truth-seeking.
Though Smith's six Renko novels have all included clever mystery plots, they also serve as a regular pulse-taking of contemporary Russia. These are extremely rich and thoughtful mysteries with memorable characters. If you begin to think you're reading the long-awaited successor to Graham Greene, then you may have figured out why these are solid novels, destined to survive the test of time.
Smith also has evolved into a masteful writer who can convey enormous meaning in just a few words. He wants to tell us, for example, that the ardor between Renko and Eva has cooled, so he writes: "Sex was performed in silence and it was difficult to say how much of their lovemaking was passion and how much the desperate scraping of a dead match." Ouch; that's all I need to know.
In hte course of his investigations in "Stalin's Ghost," Renko gets a close-up view of an election campaign, something a previous generation of Russians couldn't even imagine. In this case, the candidate of the Russian "patriots" has hired a pair of American campaign experts in media manipulation. It's a riot to see how they assess their candidate's chances--and how they go about maneuvering him into a better position to woo voters.
"Stalin's Ghost" also has a great ironic ending which ties up all kinds of loose ends, but still leaves enough of them dangling to make me feel certain there will be more adventure for Detective Renko in years to come. Bravo for that news!
©2007 by Ron Miller. The book cover reproduction is courtesy of Simon & Schuster. This column first posted July 16, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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