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Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Crime & mystery > General
A passenger train hurtling through the night. An unwed teenage
mother headed to Moscow to seek a new life. A cruel-hearted soldier
looking furtively, forcibly, for sex. An infant disappearing
without a trace.
So begins Martin Cruz Smith's masterful "Three Stations," a
suspenseful, intricately constructed novel featuring Investigator
Arkady Renko. For the last three decades, beginning with the
trailblazing "Gorky Park," Renko (and Smith) have captivated
readers with detective tales set in Russia. Renko is the ironic,
brilliantly observant cop who finds solutions to heinous crimes
when other lawmen refuse to even acknowledge that crimes have
occurred. He uses his biting humor and intuitive leaps to fight not
only wrongdoers but the corrupt state apparatus as well.
In "Three Stations," Renko's skills are put to their most severe
test. Though he has been technically suspended from the
prosecutor's office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he
strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman
whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of
Moscow's main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to
everyone--except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene
turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to
Russia's premier charity ball, the billionaires' Nijinksy Fair.
Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of
Moscow's rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash
in the face of Putin's crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed
him in power.
Renko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that
threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children
he is desperate to protect. In "Three Stations," Smith produces a
complex and haunting vision of an emergent Russia's secret
underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a bureaucracy still
paralyzed by power and fear.
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It's the following Thursday.
Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom
she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help.
His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real
threat to his life.
As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in
the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too?
Well, wouldn't that be a bonus?
But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid
at knocking off four septuagenarians.
Can the Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before
the killer finds them?
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