From Russia With Larceny

It’s good to see one of my summer reading picks, Martin Cruz Smith’s Stalin’s Ghost, receiving so much attention of late. Malcolm Jones weighs in on this “smart, fast-moving novel” in a review for Newsweek that dubs this “one of the best” among Smith’s now six books featuring ever-troubled Moscow cop Arkady Renko (“The plot is sturdy, the people and setting always vivid, always believable.”), while today’s Boston Globe carries an interview with the author, in which Smith confesses that the crimes in his Renko stories are at best peripheral:

What appeals to me about this genre is the excuse it gives a character to ask really hard questions that would otherwise land him in jail. Investigators--at least the ones I know--are slightly dubious characters socially. But they can open the book on society and read it.

I’ve only just begun reading Stalin’s Ghost, but am hoping to be as pleased with this one as I was with his previous novel, Wolves Eat Dogs (which I featured in the list of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2004). I’ll let you know if it measures up.