From the author of the famous international bestseller Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith, comes his latest crime thriller featuring Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, The Siberian Dilemma (Simon and Schuster 2019). The ninth book in the series, this is another fast-paced narrative with plenty of action including bear attacks, helicopter crashes, car chases across ice and lots more, all surrounding the intrigue and sinister undercurrents of danger of the Russian government, Soviet oligarchs, mysterious shamans and legendary monstrous sea creatures.
Set mostly in the freezing cold of Siberia, this novel follows Renko as he investigates the disappearance of his lover Tatiana, who could be missing, or could just be off on another of her dangerous journalistic assignments. Tatiana is involved with some vicious criminal characters and has become mixed up in a very complicated web of corruption.
This book will be popular with crime readers who enjoy very filmic action-based plots, and while the violence is often sudden and severe, the author also threads a subtle and amusing sense of humour into his writing and his characters’ behaviours and dialogue, that lifts and humanises the story. While I’ve only read three or four of Martin Cruz Smith’s novels, I suspect that he has a fan base all over the world that will devour this latest instalment of the adventures of Arkady Renko and then be waiting with baited breath for the next one.