Martin Cruz Smith… er… wrote the book on seeking justice under a totalitarian regime when he penned Gorky Park in 1981, and here he updates his Arkady Renko series with a book set in Putin’s Russia. Renko discovers the wilds of Siberia as he heads to Irkutsk to find his lover, the journalist Tatiana Petrovna. However, he ends up in the middle of a cat and mouse game between two rival oil oligarchs, which turns deadly. Martin Cruz Smith writes beautifully and intriguingly about Russian culture and society, and the wonders of the taiga while also revealing the many contradictions of the current regime through Renko’s predicament. Read the full review where.
