Bettie's Books

Luckily - there is a summing up of the ending of Gorky Park first.

A hardboiled cold and fishy tale of a murdered girl on a factory ship. On display here is how backs-to-the-wall humans respond when they live under a uncaring and oppressive regime.

From Recorded Books:

Ex-Chief Investigator Arkady Renko is in deep on the "slime line" - the fish-gutting station - in the Polar Star, a Soviet fish factory ship of some 250 souls, almost as many secrets, and a dangerous shipboard sub-culture that cares little for the Party, and less for human life--especially his.

From Wiki:

Polar Star is a 1989 crime novel by Martin Cruz Smith, set in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. It is a sequel to Gorky Park and features former militsiya investigator Arkady Renko.

After uncovering corruption in high places and being exposed to capitalist influences, Renko is dismissed from his job as a Moscow police investigator and is forced to accept a variety of menial jobs in remote parts of the Soviet Union. Finally, he finds himself gutting fish on a factory ship in the Bering Sea, in part to hide from the KGB, who have tried to kill him because of his role in exposing high-level corruption in Gorky Park. The Soviet factory ship is part of a US-Soviet joint venture, with the American fishing vessels catching the fish and turning the catch over to the Soviets for processing (gutting, cleaning, and freezing).

While going to sea is a way to remain out of reach of the KGB for Renko, the other crew members have signed up with the prospect of a one day stop at the United States fisheries port of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, with an extra salary allowance in dollars to let them purchase Western goods such as VCRs and cassette tapes.

Then the body of a murdered female crew member is pulled up in the vessel's nets, and Renko reluctantly agrees to investigate after the ship's zampolit gives him no choice. Renko's obstinate insistence on learning the truth behind her death, rather than allowing her murder to be covered up as a suicide, results in threats by the zampolit to block the visit to the United States, which in turn causes the workers to threaten Renko.

- Gorky Park (1981) (The Arkady Renko Series #1)
- Polar Star (1989) (The Arkady Renko Series #2)
- Red Square (1992) (The Arkady Renko Series #3)
- Havana Bay (1999) (The Arkady Renko Series #4)
- Wolves Eat Dogs (2004) (Arkady Renko Series #5)
- Stalin's Ghost (2007) (Arkady Renko Series #6)


As an aside, the BBC is due to air some Chekov short stories this week because Putin is purposefully looking the other way whilst the house featured in The Cherry Orchard is marked for demolition. Geo-Politically, the site is in Ukraine and (Ras)Putin says it has nothing to do with him.