The Siberian Dilemma

“Reading was taken seriously, and learning was respected. One man beat his cellmate to death for tearing out the last fifty pages of ‘A Tale of Two Cities.” Now that’s my kind of prison!

Arkady is back!!!! And Victor, his partner, who “was an excellent detective when he was sober.”

Tatiana is missing and Arkady flies to Irkutsk, Siberia to look for her. And, while there, he also has to interrogate a man who shot at Prosecutor Zurin. Double the fun! I really liked Bolot, the factotum/shaman! And I just really enjoyed the book - the bears, the oil, and the oligarchs! Hoping for a #10!!!

“Better to do something than nothing.”
“The Siberian dilemma,” Arkady said.

The ninth book in the Arkady Renko series has managed to avoid the false steps of many series: it does not clutter the book with continuing characters who each need a moment or a place in the plot. Yes, there are continuing characters, along with an extremely charming and useful new personage, but only Tatiana is important.

Indeed, it's Tatiana, the journalist Arkady loves, who sets the plot in motion by disappearing somewhere in southern Siberia while working on an expose of Russian oligarchs. By the time Arkady catches up to her, she is in deep with an oligarch with a frenemy fellow oligarch. Is one or both of the oligarchs corrupt? Is there a dimension of their rivalry that goes beyond control of oil fields? Will someone start taking show more potshots at Arkady?

Of course. show less

I read - and loved - Gorky Park. It seemed like such a finely constructed literary thriller. It was a mistake for me to return to the Renko series expecting the same from such a distant sequel. This one feels so hurried, and so poorly thought through. I won't talk about the denouement except to say that it was shockingly dismal; all I'll say is that it doesn't feel right for a writer to first introduce a problem, then have the characters experience that problem, and then for the problem to be ushered aside, all within approximately ten pages - but to have it happen twice in the same book is even worse.

Good Thriller but Padded with Blank Pages
Review of the Simon & Schuster paperback edition (October 2020) of the Simon & Schuster hardcover original (November 2019)

"Siberian dilemma?" Tatiana asked.
Bolot gestured in Arkady's direction.
"A fisherman is on a frozen lake. He moves around, listening all the time for the ice cracking beneath his feet, ready to jump back to thicker ice if necessary, but sometimes he's not quick enough. The ice breaks. He falls in."
"So, what's the dilemma?"
"I heard it from my wife, Irina. If he pulls himself out of the water onto the ice, he'll freeze to death in seconds, a minute at most. If he stays in the water, he'll die of hypothermia in five." - excerpt from The Siberian Dilemma

To get the lede gripe out show more of the way first, this book has about 80 blank or non-text pages (adding up full blanks, 1/2 to 9/10th page blanks, pictures, maps, preamble) padding its length from about 200 pages of reading to its full page count of 288. If your veteran author (Cruz Smith, now in his late 70s) doesn't want to expand on the length, or the editor cuts it down, why artificially bump it up?

I followed several of the early books of the Investigator Arkady Renko series after reading the first one, Gorky Park, when it appeared in 1981. Although the settings often varied wide afield from the Moscow beginnings, it did begin to stretch credibility that such an obstinate detective would survive under first the authoritarian Soviet Union, the chaos of its breakup and finally the kleptocracy of Putin. After recently re-reading the 40th Anniversary edition of Gorky Park, I was curious enough to want to read how Renko was managing in the present climate.

Cruz Smith is still excellent in his location research. This latest (2019) investigation sends Renko to the Irkutsk region near Lake Baikal in Siberia. The initiating plot is an apparent assassination attempt on his boss from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, with the Chechen suspect having fled to Siberia. Renko is also concerned that his lover Tatiana, an journalist, has not returned on an agreed date from her investigation of Russian oil oligarchs in the East. Cruz Smith adds an entertaining supporting cast into the mix, especially with a local Irkutsk "factotum" named Rinchin Bolot, of indigenous Buryat background, who attaches himself to Renko.

The twists and betrayals are typical Cruz Smith, but the setting of the Siberian landscape, Lake Baikal, the threats of the freezing cold and wild bears and, of course, the greed of the kleptocracy are all well handled. Like Chekhov's gun, the hinted dilemma of the title is paid off. The obvious inspiration of the real life story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the character of fictional oligarch Mikhail Kuznetsov is obvious of course, even to the extent of both having written a book such as My Fellow Prisoners. The resulting fates are, of course, completely different.

So overall I quite enjoyed it and appreciated its attention to real-life details and inspirations. It was just the artificial page padding of the publisher that was an annoying distraction.

Other Reviews
Review in Asian Review of Books by Peter Gordon, December 13, 2019.

Trivia and Links
[Mild Spoiler] There really is speculation about a Russian Bermuda Triangle in the Irkutsk, Siberia region. show less

The Siberian Dilemma, Martin Cruz Smith, author; Jeremy Bobb, narrator
Arkady Renko is a special investigator in Moscow. When his girlfriend, investigative journalist Tatiana Petrovna fails to return home as promised, he travels to Siberia to search for her. He believes she is there working on a story about oligarchs and may be in trouble. Although he does find her there, his problems are just beginning. He is mauled by a bear and gravely injured, she is in a helicopter crash and barely escapes with her life, well known oligarchs are murdered to protect Vladimir Putin, and a corrupt a prosecutor threatens Zhenya, a 15 year old boy that Arkady cares for. The book is an easy read but it contains a lot of unnecessary dialogue about bees and show more bears. I thought the plot was thin with a lot of unnecessary extraneous tangents as Renko faces his own Siberian Dilemmas. show less

Once more Renko goes searching for Tatiana, the rusty knight chasing after the damsel in distress intent on exposing the corrupt rapacity of oligarchic dragons.

In a continuing series of misadventures by Arkady Renko, a Moscow investigator, the story takes us to Irkutsk in the Siberian plains. Corruption and political machinations dog Renko's investigation as well as his search for Tatiania, his journalist girlfriend. While the Siberian wilderness is always a background to the narrative, I would guess Martin Cruz Smith has not experienced enough of such a climate or bear hunting and driving on frozen lakes to really convey a genuine feel for the setting.

The author provided a convoluted plot, with some sneaky twists, but largely, Renko is more of a puppet responding to unclear schemes behind his back. The action falls into a series of fits and starts, with interludes that seem disconnected. show more However, there are enough good pieces to make this worth reading ~ if you've enjoyed other Renko novels. Not up to the standard of Gorky Park or Red Square, for example, but Bolot, the 'factotum', is excellently drawn and brings the best of the story into an enjoyable read. show less