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Product Description
Review
“[Smith] takes what in essence is a police procedural and elevates it to the level of absorbing fiction.”
—Nicholas A. Basbanes, Los Angeles Times
“A continuing adventure that in terms of popular fiction is surely a work of art.”
—Patrick Anderson, Washington Post
“Martin Cruz Smith knows his Russia. Every page reeks of Moscow: dirty snow, the stink of cigarette and vodka fumes, the cynicism and tasteless opulence of the mafia, the all-pervasive corruption.”
—The Economist
“The sustained success of Smith’s Renko books is based on much more than Renko. This author’s gift for tart, succinct description creates a poisonous political backdrop, one that makes his characters’ survival skills as important as any of their other attributes. . . [This is] one top-flight series, still sharply honed, none the worse for wear.”
—Janet Maslin, New York Times
“There are few thriller practitioners indeed who can weld a story to a graceful chassis of literature and send it barreling away at top speed. Martin Cruz Smith is one of them.”
—Andrew Z. Galarneau, Buffalo News
“As always, Smith elevates a police procedural story to a taste of Russia, a glass of vodka poured quivering to the brim.”
—Jennifer Kay, Associated Press
Product Description
A passenger train hurtling through the night. An unwed teenage mother headed to Moscow to seek a new life. A cruel-hearted soldier looking furtively, forcibly, for sex. An infant disappearing without a trace. So begins Martin Cruz Smith’s masterful Three Stations, a suspenseful, intricately constructed novel featuring Investigator Arkady Renko. For the last three decades, beginning with the trailblazing Gorky Park, Renko (and Smith) have captivated readers with detective tales set in Russia. Renko is the ironic, brilliantly observant cop who finds solutions to heinous crimes when other lawmen refuse to even acknowledge that crimes have occurred. He uses his biting humor and intuitive leaps to fight not only wrongdoers but the corrupt state apparatus as well. In Three Stations, Renko’s skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been technically suspended from the prosecutor’s office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of Moscow’s main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to everyone—except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia’s premier charity ball, the billionaires’ Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow’s rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash in the face of Putin’s crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed him in power. Renko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children he is desperate to protect. In Three Stations, Smith produces a complex and haunting vision of an emergent Russia’s secret underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a bureaucracy still paralyzed by power and fear.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gritty Look at the "New" Russia from the Point of View of the Most Vulnerable,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: The Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel (Audio CD)
And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him, and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." - Exodus 2:6Martin Cruz Smith continually amazes me with the Investigator Arkady Renko novels. They all reek despair . . . but in totally different ways. Renko never seems to have been in a more untenable spot than in Three Stations due to his job being terminated. That doesn't seem to bother him. Renko still wants to exercise his special skill: finding the bad guys who do unspeakable things. The book's settings are very powerful. If you have ever been in a large train station (such as Grand Central in New York City), you have probably wondered about whether people live in the tunnels underneath the station and what dramas are being played out on the trans that come and go. Mr. Smith beautifully draws on such speculations to weave a powerful tale of corruption and redemption. You'll be moved, too, by the parts of the story that feature a young mother who is about to have an encounter on a train that she'll never forget. I listened to the unabridged recording read by Ron McLarty and highly recommend this version if you like to listen to books.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Arkadi Light,
By Kotter "kotter49" (Caledon East, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Three Stations (Hardcover)
I should preface this review by stating I am a longtime Arkadi Renko fan. I have walked the streets of Havana with a copy of Havana Bay in my backpack. I have read Polar Star so often I have the dialogue memorized. That being said, I was very disappointed with this effort. It has the feeling of being ghost written. The sardonic dry wit is gone as is the snappy dialogue. The book was a brief 3 hour read with none of the interesting plot growth of the other books. All in all it felt like a book Smith felt obligated to write and not driven to right. It's time to retire Renko or put some more effort into the story.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
`Life is unfair. Why should death be any different?',
By J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Three Stations (Hardcover)
This is the seventh novel to feature Arkady Renko, a series which began in 1981 with `Gorky Park'. Renko was a young officer on the way up in `Gorky Park', in `Three Stations' he is on the way down. Technically, Renko has been suspended from the prosecutor's office and is about to be forced out by superiors uncomfortable with the way in which he continues to inconveniently solve cases and bring the guilty to account.The novel opens with Maya, a teenage mother, travelling to Moscow by train. Maya is fleeing from the past and is looking for a better life for her and her baby. Maya is rescued from a soldier by an older woman - but then awakens in the Three Stations train station at the Komsomol Square deprived of both her daughter and her possessions. Zhenya, the fifteen year old orphan previously rescued by Renko (`Wolves Eat Dogs'), tries to help her. At the same time, Renko is helping Victor Orlov investigate a suspicious death in a derelict trailer in another area of Three Stations. It seems that the dead woman is a prostitute and most likely dead of a drug overdose. This, for his superiors, is enough to rule out homicide. Renko does not agree and his subsequent investigations, even after he is fired, reveal a complex case. I read this novel in one sitting, caught up in Smith's vivid and gritty description of a corrupt and dysfunctional Moscow. The dual storylines: Renko trying to solve a murder; and Zhenya and Maya searching for baby Katya showcase the contrasts in a Moscow where gangs of homeless children co-exist together with the corruptly wealthy who can buy anything - including children - for a price. Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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