Russia, and more specifically Moscow, is Arkady Renko’s home turf where, as a sometime senior investigator for important cases in the prosecutor’s office [when he isn't suspended or dismissed], he somehow manages to solve cases nobody above him wants solved. On the brink of quitting out of disgust at the beginning of the novel, Renko refuses to submit his letter of resignation out of spite in light of his hatred for his immediate superior.
There is a matter of a dead woman found in a trailer in the Three Stations train depot area, which Renko believes to be murder, while other officials dismiss it as a case of a prostitute who overdosed. Meanwhile, another young prostitute runs away from her faraway brothel with her infant daughter, only to discover, as the train arrives at Three Stations, that the baby has been kidnapped from her arms as she slept, giving rise to two inter-related plots: the mother’s quest for the baby, and Renko’s search for a killer, maybe even one of a serial nature.
The emerging capitalist society gives the author an opportunity to reflect on the goings on in present-day Russia, while two other elements of the plot are told as twisted tales. In contrast with the excesses of the billionaire oligarchs, the author portrays the squalid existence of hosts of kids who live and steal in and around the Three Stations.
This type of complex story is typical of the Renko series, beginning with Gorky Park and continuing with Stalin’s Ghost and other novels, casting light on the all-too-often harshness and ugliness of Russian life, official corruption, and hopelessness of the average person. Smith writes with fervor and the eye of a cynic.
Recommended.
