Three Stations

Let me begin by admitting my bias: I think that Martin Cruz Smith is one of the best novelists out there today. What has often been said of David Cornwell (a.k.a. John LeCarre)also goes for Martin Cruz Smith: he may write popular fiction but it's also great literature. If you want a sample of what I mean, just read the final page or even just the final line of "Three Stations." (Although it's best if you read the rest of it first.)

"Three Stations" is the latest chapter in the life and career of Arkady Renko, Smith's wise and somewhat world-weary Moscow detective who is forced to suffer fools, corruption, and social depravity in the course of his job. Renko is a complex and appealing man and just listening to his thinking is a treat in show more itself. However,the real treat is Smith's ability to bring you right onto the streets beside Detective Renko. Indeed, Smith has a way with his descriptions and dialog that's almost cinematic. (My 12th grade English teacher used to talk about a "language of vision" and that's something that Smith has really nailed.)

This story and its characters - particularly the children - will almost break your heart. Indeed, there are few writers of popular fiction who can portray children with no future in such an unflinching and yet compassionate manner. Fortunately, the book ends on a note of affirmation: there are still tattered pieces of hope for the legions of people who are the victims of modern Russia.

Even if you're not at all a fan of detective/mystery stories, the works of Martin Cruz Smith are still worth a look. Great literature always is. show less

A young girl arrives at Moscow's Three Stations, her baby stolen. An only slightly older chess hustler is drawn to help in her single-minded search that draws in street gangs and pimps and murderous hoodlums, not to mention the chess-hustler's sort-of-adopted father, Arkady Renko. So far on the outs with his militia boss that he's not even working any cases, Renko pushes at the the apparent suicde of a prostitute and finds himself moving in some high circles indeed.

Two seperate plots neatly dovetailing is a new approach for a Renko book, and it works brilliantly, moving from the desperate lives of Moscow stree children to the obscenely wealthy elite who hold auctions to raise money for those same street children very little of which, show more as you migth imagine, reaches the actual streets. In particular, following the progress of the kidnapped baby from opportunistic kidnappers to would-be purchasers who have a change of heart when confronted with the reality of a crying child to abandonment on a subway generates agonies of horrified suspense, though the agonies and despair of the increasinly desperate child mother runs a close second. show less

It's good to see Smith back on form in this seventh entry in the Arkady Renko series. Shorter than its predecessors, it provides a much more focused story without as much extraneous background info thrown in (see Wolves Eat Dogs for the worst example of this). Renko remains one of the great characters in fiction. An unfailingly honest police detective who lives by his own code even if the world is falling apart around him, Renko trudges through a morass of murder, corruption, and indifference to get to the heart of a Moscow killing.

As usual, the book has a few too many coincidences and all the threads tie up a little too nicely at the end, but the joy is in the dark ride through the alleys and stations and forgotten places of Moscow in show more the company of Renko, a 15-year old mother looking for her baby, some sub-teen runaways scratching out their existence, and Zhenya, the chess-hustling teenager introduced in a previous book who maintains a tenuous relationship with Renko.

This will not do a lot for Moscow tourism, however. show less

Martin Cruz-Smith is incredible writer who I am not sure gets his due. Like Ian Rankin and James Lee Burke, to call him a mystery writer is to not give him his full due. His books while centered around a mystery have just as much to with history and social commentary as they do with solving a crime. Three Stations is no different. It explores the society that has become modern Russia with an emphasis on its young who are falling through the cracks. The mystery involving a missing baby and murdered girls is all secondary and almost seems to solve itself, with the real story being the saga of children who are forgotten in a modern society.

Disappointing. I have been a fan of this series since Gorky Park opened it in the early 80's. I thought each of the first 5 books spread over 25 years or so was terrific. Number 6 was Stalin's Ghost which I did not enjoy, nor Three Stations which to me felt like Martin Cruz Smite Lite. It was a short book, bad guys were dispatched conveniently. It was entertaining, a good movie script or made for TV two parter but it didn't compare to the first five. I feel like the series has just run out of gas and MCS is quite sure how to end it, what to do with Arkady Renko. The usual snappy dialog was there, along with Renko's perpetual "180 degrees from what is expected" comebacks, but it seemed like the dialog style had spread to a number of show more characters like some kind of disease. An engaging, but simple plot. Ho-hum, please don't do a number 8. show less

"Three Stations" is author Martin Cruz Smith's latest installment featuring Russian prosecutorial investigator Arkady Renko, though it's not the greatest. That honor remains firmly in the grip of Smith's exceptional 1981 thriller "Gorky Park," which first introduced Renko to the literary world. "Three Stations" is the seventh novel in the Renko series. Smith wasn't quite 40 years old when "Gorky Park" came out, and the Soviet Union still had a decade of life left in it. Smith was nearly nearly 70 when "Three Stations" was published in 2010, by which time the Soviet Union that Smith and Renko grew up with had been dead and gone for almost 20 years.

Or had it? As he has with all the novels in his Renko series, Smith artfully imbues the show more stories and the characters that fill them with a certain brand of uniquely vodka-drenched Russian discontent and world-weariness that has thrived unabated for generations. It's clear Smith and Renko see Russia's current sociopolitical and economic oligarchical hierarchy as fundamentally far more the same than different from its Soviet and Tsarist predecessors in all but name.

The plot in "Three Stations" is straightforward, anchored to a rural teenage prostitute named Maya's frantic search for her stolen baby in the bleak and dangerous Moscow neighborhood from which the novel takes its name, while Renko tracks a serial killer of young women. The book directs at least as much focus on Maya's travails as on Renko's, which has disappointed some of this book's reviewers. That said, it's clear the principal character in "Three Stations" isn't Maya, or even Renko, so much as it is present-day Moscow. Viewed from that perspective, "Three Stations" is a very good book; Smith's eye for detail and his talent for unveiling the crushing and seemingly insurmountable disparities between Moscow's privileged elite and downtrodden masses are no less sharp than they were in "Gorky Park." Smith's deft touch with dialogue, in particular, is just as brilliant as it has ever been in succinctly conveying modern Muscovites' daily tribulations. Moscow is a massive city of 11.5 million people that lately finds itself drowning in cash wrenched as much via the country's deeply imbedded corruption and criminality as from rampant exploitation of Russia's vast natural resources. The brutish effects of that money's savagely inequitable distribution inflame the novel's every page. Russia is a very old country, and whether ruled by Tsar, Secretary General, or President, Smith's premise is that Russia's internal monologue has stayed remarkably unchanged in many ways for many centuries.

Though it's not hard to tell both author and character have grown somewhat tired in the past 30 years, nevertheless they've done so gracefully. Fans of Smith and Renko, and those who find modern Russia fascinating, will appreciate "Three Stations" as a knowledgeable thriller author's newest postcard from an unvarnished Moscow. show less

Arkady Renko may be my favorite fictional detective. Wry, long-suffering, stubborn, quietly principled, philosophical, observant, hesitant, a bit of a schlemiel. And the late/former Soviet Union has been an excellent setting to let his sensibility play out.

This latest installment in his series is welcome and is an enjoyable read, but in some ways is sad for a fan of Renko's. Like all things on this earth, detective series are mortal and the signs of decay are pretty apparent in this series by now: Renko has now acquired a young sidekick, and the novels are now driven largely by setting.

Not to say that there is nothing left to the series. Smith is a very good writer, and the changing historical situation of Russia brings new opportunity show more for Smith to observe the curiosities of human and institutional nature. But the novels are no longer energized by the sense of discovery. They have become a lot more generic--plots are resolved with cliche cinematic scenes (as in the climactic car chase in Three Stations) and the new themes (here: child exploitation of various sorts) seem rather imposed.

But, as I say, Smith is a fine writer. The understated wit won a few out-loud laughs from this reader, and he keeps the novel short and fast-moving, so none of the faults mentioned above has to be suffered with for very long. And Renko is always good company.

Another upside for fans of the series: one can easily imagine this novel being filmed, and, to some extent, I think it may have been written with that in mind. Done right, Renko might make a great film protagonist. Let's hope. show less