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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Steamy chiller?, 30 Aug 2006
What's this, a Renko book with no snow? I approached this book with trepidation as Renko abroad just didn't seem right, but as they say you can take the boy out of Moscow, but...
Arkady Renko is back in his fourth outing and instead of solving murders in Moscow he's in Havana to tie up the loose ends relating to the officially acccidental death of his old friend, and erstwhile KGB major, Pribluda. Renko remains the sardonic enigma we have grown to know and love, but his trip to Cuba is more than just another murder story, here we see Renko struggling to come to terms with who he is and his place in the world. The world has changed, but has he? Can he cope with the modern post-Communist Russia or will he find a surrogate home in Marxist Cuba? Will he come to terms with losing his beloved Irina forever? Will he fall for the fierce but fragile Ofelia?
Martin Cruz Smith serves up another dish of sinister menace with lashings of blood and seedy locations, but I have to say this book seems to take an absolute age to get going. I only stuck with it as I has enjoyed the other Renko books so much and I was glad that I did. However, readers new to Renko might be put off with the slow start and give up before the real fireworks start. As such, I recommend that you read the Renko books in order and that way you'll know more about Renko's legacy, his thorny friendship with Pribluda and why he misses Irina so.
The sultry feel of this book will make you hot under the collar and make you reach for some cool rum, but don't be fooled as the freezing chills of Gorky Park can still be felt.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Steamy Intrigue in Sweltering Havana, 10 Jun 2001
By A Customer
This is the first of the Arkady Renko novels I have read, and buying it was influenced by the fact that I had spent time exploring Havana and its environs a short time before.Summoned by an unsigned fax from what turns out to be an old hand at Havana's diminished Russian Embassy, detective Renko travels from mid-winter Moscow to subtropical January in Havana, to investigate the disappearance and death of a KGB operative and one-time associate. Both he and his drowned friend Pribluda are of a mindset unable to come to terms with life in public service in post-communist Russia. With an almost bumbling manner and persistence reminiscent of a Slavonic Peter Faulk playing Columbo in the 1970's television series (in a black cashmire coat with a story of its own in place of a trench-coat), Renko finds himself an unwelcome and unpopular reminder to the Cuban police investigating the gruesome corpse washed up in Havana Bay, of Russia's once domineering influence over their affairs. And a threat to some shadowy individuals with their own agenda for change in this outwardly ramshackle island nation. Martin Cruz Smith has captured many of the undercurrents that pervade society in modern Havana. They range from a crumbling political, economic and social system (to say nothing of crumbling buildings and crowded tenements), to the moonlighting, hustling, and sex-for-sale, that puts bread on Cuban tables in the way that the state's mediocre salaries do not. He captures too, the cameraderie of Cuban war vererans of Angola and Ethopia. The pervasiveness of African mysticism and music in Cuban life. And the combination of stoicism and sheer exhuberance that shine though in what Castro euphemistically calls the "special times", of no Russsian aid and an ongoing US embargo. These ingredients are skillfully blended into a suspenseful tale that draws us into three hundred pages plus of the intrigue and double-dealing that swirl around a handful of well-drawn characters. Once into it, I found the book hard to put down. I'm sure it will make a good movie too, though it may be a little cerebral for current Hollywood tastes. All the better if it could be filmed on location. Conjo!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"What was it about violent death that was better than dreams?", 10 Dec 2006
When the brooding and sometimes depressed Russian "hero," Arkady Renko, travels to Havana to investigate the gruesome death of a Russian colleague, his contact with the high energy Cubans does little to improve his view of life. Renko, who has been featured in four Cruz Smith novels, has been so anxious to escape from the corruption in Moscow, that he has paid his own way to Cuba for a break. Within a week, however, he is planning his suicide.
Forty years have elapsed since the Cuban Revolution raised and then dashed the hopes of the Cuban people, and corruption is rampant among the higher-ups in the Cuban police department and the government. The early affinity between the Cubans and the Russians has changed to outright enmity, and Renko finds his own life threatened by Cubans. Though as a Russian he is not supposed to investigate his friend Pribluda's death, he is unsatisfied with the inquest. Making the acquaintance of Ophelia Osorio, a police officer in the National Police, who believes him to be honest, he is sometimes able to gain important information.
Gradually, this complex story evolves into an investigation of much more than the death of one Russian. A sugar company, set up in Panama and involving high-ranking Cubans, some Chinese, and some Russians appears to be a shell in a get-rich-quick scheme. Several American radicals now living in Cuba are involved in this and other schemes, and as the action picks up, complicated by Santeria and Abakua religious practices and beliefs, Renko is brutally attacked, leaving him wondering if he will live long enough to get on the plane for Moscow that weekend.
Cruz Smith's ability to convey the atmosphere of Havana and to depict the mood of its inhabitants of all economic levels brings the story alive, and the contrasts between Renko's dour Russian character and that of the Cubans suggest that the alienation between the two countries may have involved more than the Russians' failure to support Cuba financially. The action, slow to start and sometimes graphically violent, ends in a dramatic grand finale, including several crosses and double-crosses and leading to the reader's new view of what was really going on behind the scenes. Though the action is not as tight as it is in Gorky Park and Polar Star, this novel further develops the character of Renko and hints at new, more complex Renko novels to come. n Mary Whipple
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