Reviewed by Armen Pandola
Like many writers of mystery fiction, Martin Cruz Smith started writing books in a variety of genres, but had a big hit with one character in one book and found himself captive to that character.
In 1981, Cruz wrote Gorky Park about a detective, Arkady Renko, in Soviet Russia who investigates the murder of three people in the title's location in Moscow. The book was an international best seller and, as many such books are, was made into a movie that was not quite as good as the book.
In the years since, Cruz has written many books in many other genres - I can recommend a beautiful historical fiction mystery, Rose. But, he has always returned to Arkady - his latest, Siberian DilemMa is his ninth Arkady book. As the title suggests, Arkady's investigation of a possibly corrupt oligarch takes him to Siberia, but his real motive in going there is to find out what happened to the journalist he has fallen in love with who is writing a story about the oligarch and has disappeared.
I pause to tell you about another book, Siberian Light by Robin White, written in 1997. White traveled over much the same ground as Cruz will explore, even to the point of having a detective, Gregori Nowek, with a wise-cracking sidekick, Chuchin. If you like these kinds of books, give Siberian Light a try - you'll like it.
Renko's colorful sidekick is called Rinchin Bolot, his factotum, or jack-of-all-trades. “What’s a factotum?” Renko is asked. “I’m not sure, but I seem to have one.” Cruz writes, “Bolot was an iceberg, all bright surfaces and hidden depths.” In Bolot, Cruz has found a voice to tell us all the dirty and delightful details of life in Siberia.
Cruz writes about the new Russia, full of billionaires with political ambitions and not too much social consciousness. They kill and steal and treat journalists as their personal PR people - and if the journalist objects, the journalist could easily find herself frozen to death on some weekend hunting trip or even a walk in the woods - the current temperature in its major city, Irkutsk is 8 degrees F. And don't think of Irkutsk as some frozen wasteland - its population is 2.5 million. Nearby Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water, containing more water than the North American Great Lakes combined. It is the world's deepest, clearest and oldest lake.
The plot is less interesting than the locale. Cruz doesn't seem able to pull the plug on some of his lengthening list of characters who surround Arkady, like his girlfriend, Tatiana. In the previous Renko novel titled, Tatiana, Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow. In the new book, she just re-appears and, now, she is Renko's lover.
If you have read all of the previous Renko novels, you'll read this one - it just the way it works. If you have not read them, then start with Gorky Park, one of the best books of its kind. The next three books, Polar Star, Red Square and Havana Bay are all excellent, but the quality drops after that. Siberian Dilemma is about as good as the rest of them.
Like many famous detectives, Renko doesn't age - he would be about 75 or 80 now, some forty years since his arrival on the scene in Gorky Park. Death and taxes - inevitable, right? Not any longer. For some of us - taxes can be avoided with the right accountant or for the right President and death can be avoided for some characters, especially famous detectives. Even Doyle brought back Sherlock Holmes. Is it time to see Renko sleep with the fishes?
Let's hope that Cruz can do something that is rare among writers of serial crime dramas or any writer for that matter - finish one final Renko novel that is better than the rest.