The Bad Old Days: Stalin’s Ghost

Review by Bruce Collier August 9, 2007 Issue

Stalin’s Ghost is the sixth outing for Martin Cruz Smith’s unique investigator, Arkady Renko. First introduced in 1981 in Gorky Park, Renko’s fortunes have been as up-and-down as those of his nation, the former Soviet Union. Despite his exotic beat, Renko is cast in a mold familiar to readers of detective fiction. He’s the One Honest Cop, the incorruptible and dogged pursuer of justice operating in a jungle of amoral opportunists.

I read and enjoyed Renko’s first two adventures, Gorky Park and Polar Star, when they came out, but lost track of his subsequent exploits in Red Square, Havana Bay and Wolves Eat Dogs. Though Renko is a series character, a series writer has to be able to take on all readers at all points and make them feel at home. Smith succeeds. Having read this one, I checked out all three of the interim books from the library, and intend to get caught up as soon as possible.

Stalin’s Ghost finds Renko in semi-disgrace, as always, employed as an investigator for the Moscow prosecutor’s office. He and Victor, his morose, hard-drinking partner, are unenthusiastically attempting a murder-for-hire sting operation. Meantime, Renko’s live-in girlfriend Eva (acquired in an earlier book), is about to leave him for Detective Nikolai Isakov. Isakov is a hero of the bloody Chechnya conflict, and an aspiring politician. He and his partner, a sociopath bulldog named Marat Urman, are veterans of a Special Forces unit, the Black Berets. Both are investigating a series of brutal homicides with increasingly suspicious connections. Renko is making his own investigation of Isakov when a mysterious “sighting” braces Moscow.

A group of subway passengers, some of them aging veterans of Word War II, claim to have seen the ghost of Joseph Stalin on a train platform. The platform becomes a sort of shrine, attended by the media and flocks of Russians longing for the law and order of the “good old days” under the dictator. Isakov jumps on this right-wing groundswell as a means to public office. As with everything in Renko’s world, all is not as it seems. His curiosity and refusal to be frightened off the scent lead him from Moscow to the provinces. On the way he is chased, beaten, nearly strangled, and shot in the head. Though he’d rather talk his way out of trouble, Renko doesn’t always get the chance to open his mouth.

In addition to this, Renko has to worry about Zhenya, a delinquent pre-teen chess prodigy that occasionally lives with him and Eva. Then there are the ghosts of his past. Renko’s father, a young and ruthless general under Stalin, occasionally invades Renko’s dreams. Add to that a couple of wartime atrocities, black market doings, and the near-comic struggle of the Communist party to stay alive in modern Russia, and you have the story.

Great detectives, like Sherlock Holmes or Spenser, have many things in common. Intelligence, courage, coolness under pressure, and a nose for deceit are essential. Proficiency with fists or firearms is optional. Everything else is detail, like a taste for cocaine or gourmet cuisine. What gets Arkady through his workday, and makes him a compelling read, is his attitude.

Arkady balances his Russian pessimism with a bone-dry wit. His understated mode of expression has a strong flavor of Chekhov and wry Jewish folk-humor. No matter how desperate his situation, he can come up with a deadpan caption. The following is a conversation between a doctor and Arkady:

“‘I hear that you are an investigator who doesn’t carry a gun. What is the philosophy behind that?’
‘No philosophy. In some situations the gun becomes an issue. You start worrying about when to show it, when to use it. It’s like a locomotive; it takes you where it wants to go.’
‘And then someone has to pick a bullet out of your head.’
‘It’s not an air-tight system.’”

Characterization aside, Smith has created a dramatic world for his people. “Dystopian” barely begins to describe the cold, dingy, paranoid society Arkady is pledged to protect. Everyone is working an angle, some to get rich, most just to keep themselves fed and housed. Few ever refuse a drink, day or night. It must be a nightmare, if people are actually nostalgic for tyranny.

As with all really great detective fiction, the mystery is subordinate to the characters and the mood. Part street fight, part chess match, Stalin’s Ghost is another entertaining adventure in the continuing career of a shrewd, resilient Russian cookie.

Stalin’s Ghost, 332 pages, Simon & Schuster. Available at bookstores and online booksellers.

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