Brought Russia to life. The investigation of some murders but also about coping with life on a totalitarian state. Made contemporary by having the Ukraine as a pivotal setting. ( )

The story follows an elderly Arkady Renko who is traveling all over the Crimean and Ukraine just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is searching for a disappeared girl, and trying to solve a number of political murders on people involved with the opposition.
A well written, relatively simple little story, the kind a master storyteller may write late in her career. Excellent writing and worldbuilding, but very little complexity in plot and storyline.
In that way it reminds me of Agents running in the field, John le Carres penultimate outing. ( )

Cruz Smith's tenth Arkady Renko novel, Independence Square, moves us from the forests of Siberia in the previous book back to Moscow and as the subtitle says, to Ukraine. This is a book written about events happening now.

Renko is asked by someone he knows, Fyodor Abikov, to find his missing daughter, Karina. He is worried and although Renko is side lined to a desk job, he takes this case on privately. There are many dead bodies in the solving of this conundrum.

Karina is a member of an anti-Putin group known as Forum and plays in a string quartet. Her flatmate Elena also plays in the same quartet and sees her on television in Ukraine standing behind the Governor. Renko heads off to Kyiv with Elena to provide a plausible story in order to cross the boundary between the two countries. Once there they track her down and find out her reasons for disappearing. It's just that neither of them believe her.

All of this takes place against the annexation of Crimea and Forum's protests are hassled and beaten by members of the Werewolves, a biker gang that helped in the annexation and so are now untouchable. Smith is convincing in describing the 'war' Putin is fighting agaist and and all opponents.

Yes, Arkady thought, a war was exactly what it was, but a war against perceived as well as real, internal opponents and external enemies. It was Stalin's Great Terror updated for modern times, with disinformation, legal machinations, indiscriminate violence. Bloodshed was a way of proving loyalty.
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The story descends into a persecution of Tartars who had already been made homeless by the removal of them from Crimea.

This was how pogroms started, by marking out an enemy and ushering in violence.
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Whilst we don't have magic or folklore in this book as we did in the Siberian Dilemma, we do have dolphins guarding the waters of Crimea, preventing boats from leaving and I was so unsure about this that I googled it. It is true. They are trained for defence duties.

You couldn't make it up! ( )

Oops - she road it with ease. 191

Another well-paced, economical story of Arcady's latest imbroglio. I have a hard time getting my head around how fast he forms his attachments to women, but there it is, every time. It isn't like a teenage crush or a first love, but more practical and, at least this time out, more empathetic and as a result of propinquity. The real villain is not hard to spot, nor to understand, but there is no "justice" not that there is in Russia. Ever. ( )

I really enjoyed this thriller featuring the a great Arkady Renko
It’s a long time since I read an Arkady Renko book but I have to say it was great to be reading another of Martin Cruz Smiths fine thrillers and I look forward to reading another of his thrillers soon. ( )