The Nature of Things

The Siberian dilemma as stated by Moscow investigator Arkady Renko is simply this: If you fall into a lake in Siberia in winter, do you stay in and die quickly or do you climb out and let the hypothermia kill you a bit more slowly? The question always is to act or not to act. It's a question faced almost daily by Renko in his job as an investigator and, even though he knows that to act is often dangerous and most likely won't accomplish anything, he can't help himself. He acts to solve crimes and bring criminals to whatever bit of justice he can achieve or, in some cases as in this tale, he acts to prevent an innocent party from being punished. He knows the system is corrupt and he is thoroughly cynical about his prospects for success, but still, he keeps trying. He keeps striving. This time out, Renko is worried about his lover (former lover?), the journalist Tatiana Petrovna. Tatiana had headed off to Siberia in search of a story about the oligarchs who control the oil fi...

I've always enjoyed Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series. I have read several of the books out of sequence and now I'm going back to pick up the ones I've missed. Thus, I came to read Havana Bay , the fourth in the series while on vacation last week. It was a good vacation read. Smith is a good writer who knows how to move a story along. He kept me interested and kept me turning pages. This episode in the Renko saga takes Arkady out of Russia, which should be obvious from the title. It is the late '90s and the divorce between Cuba and Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, is just about final. Renko, the intrepid and cynical Moscow investigator, received an anonymous message from someone in Havana that his friend Pribluda, who was in Havana for some unknown reason, was in trouble and needed Arkady's help. Arkady drops everything and flies to Havana, only to learn that a body on an innertube has washed up in the bay and that the body is believed to be that of his ...