Havana Bay (Arkady Renko Novels, No 4)
by Martin Cruz Smith
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Book Reviews of Havana Bay (Arkady Renko Novels, No 4)
Book Review: Out of Place in Havana
Summary: 4 Stars
Arkady Renko began his fictional career as a Soviet militia (police) investigator. By the third book in the series Red Square, the Soviet Union had collapsed - into the dustbin of history as it were - and in the fourth installment he has traveled to Havana on his own dime to investigate the disappearance of an old `friend'. As the book opens, Renko is present at bay side when the Cuban police retrieve a grossly decayed body from the water. Is it Pribluda? And how has he died?
Renko, however, is distracted by his own more personal grief. Devastated by the death of his wife at the hands of incompetent Russian doctors, Renko prepares to kill himself in Havana. Just then Arkady is interrupted by Cubans trying to kill him, which rather oddly nudges him back toward life. He forms a liaison with beautiful Cuban detective Ofelia Osorio - a liaison which neither of them particularly desires. Russians are persona non grata in post-Soviet era Cuba, a country now cut off from its source of largesse.
Cuba seems shabby and run-down. We see otherwise good Communists dabbling in strange voodoo-like rituals. Nothing works very well, except perhaps the people (well some of them anyway). Old cars, iffy electricity, doubtful food supplies.
Renko and Osorio slowly unravel a complex web of intrigue. Along the way, Cruz Smith populates his book with various interesting characters including a wealthy ex-pat American (suggestive of Robert Vesco), a former black power American radical (modeled on William Lee Brent?), a homicidal police detective, and an ingenious, but devious pathologist. A plot if afoot to make a killing, millions of dollars and more, but how high does it go?
Good fun for fans of Arkady Renko, even if it is not the best book in the series.
Book Review: Well written atmospherics
Summary: 4 Stars
M. C. Smith is a good writer displaying a nice balance of description, dialogue, and deft plotting. This is the third book of his I've read and greatly enjoyed. We are just as puzzled as Moscow investigator Arkady Renko to find ourselves in Fidel Castro's Havana with a rotting body on our hands. Smith masterfully tightens the screws, scrambles the alignments of the characters, builds and shifts apparent conspiracies, and thoroughly triangulates poor Renko. The plot circles back to its start, once, twice. The silent maelstrom widens, with sudden spates of information or new characters, sucking Renko in and down among colorful people who suddenly change their spots. There's also a sparkle of romance with a Cuban detective, Osorio, but what really is her motive for consorting with a despised Russian? What is going on here? I certainly couldn't figure it out. As well, I do find it hard to anticipate Renko or know why he is doing something...but that keeps it interesting. A nit I still don't understand is why he long kept certain things about himself secret--like his wife--or how he knew when to happen to hide key items just in time: on what grounds is he so extraordinarily secretive in loose-living Havana?Smith's Havana has the authentic feel of a poor Latin American city, its sights and colors, except perhaps for just how persistently sweaty it must be for a Renko direct from wintry Moscow. It is a grimly retrograde environment peopled by failed socialists on the make, several large brutes, poverty amid faded spendor, and a stink of ingenious corruptions and make-do (irruptions of an alleged "Cuban Method" that smack of Carl Hiaasen's mordant humor). Renko exhibits more a Le Carre cynicism or gallows humor in this haunted society, and then as a hunted man. Smith has written an entertaining story containing many puzzling events. I enjoyed the ride more than the ending.
Book Review: Following Renko Into The Post-Soviet Era
Summary: 4 Stars
Although in resolving the fates of some characters from his past novels Smith made a few "mistakes" here in Havana Bay, this is beyond a doubt one heck of an enjoyable read. As always, these Renko novels are not only mysteries or crime stories but also function as adept sociological studies of the societies in which they are set. In this case, Renko, once the most brilliant investigator in Communist-era Moscow, finds himself in Havana, Cuba, at a time when Russians are not only unwelcome, but hated after their financial pullout from Cuba is regarded as a deep betrayal of the previously close relationship the two Marxist nations enjoyed. Renko seeks answers on this tumultuous Caribbean island. Is a body found floating in Havana Bay truly that of the KGB officer whose personal intervention saved his life during the events covered in the novel Gorky Park? And if it is, was the man's death an accident, or murder? And why exactly was an agent of the defunct KGB in Cuba at all? Smith explores post-Cold War Cuban society with the same degree of careful (and coldly honest) evaluation that has always distinguished his novels from those of his many imitators. Cuba, stricken with shame at its status as a stopover point for rich Europeans undertaking "sexual tourism" is a nation teetering on collapse. Run by an anachronistic god-like dictator, impoverished and growing moreso by the month, this island nation that exported Marxist ideology so proudly in days gone by is by the time of Renko's visit teeming with plots, scandals, and bloody crime waves. Perhaps in no other volume of this quartet of novels has the main character, Arkady Renko, faced dangers so unrelenting.Book Review: Inferno Con Salsa
Summary: 4 Stars
Martin Cruz Smith is the Dante of post-Soviet Russia, and Arkady Renko, Mr. Cruz Smith's protagonist in the "Gorky Park" series is our guide to the nether regions. Renko is the perfect Russian: tortured, haunted, romantic, and in need of a square meal. The problem is, if you fed him he'd probably go into shock from the nourishment. In "Havana Bay" Renko doesn't seem to consume much more than strong cigarettes and the left-over pickles in a recently murdered (?) friend's refrigerator. And how a Russian in Cuba gets home-style pickles is a mystery unto itself. Mr. Cruz Smith is a master of atmosphere and character. In his series he takes us from Moscow, to the Bering Sea, to Havana, and each locale is another vision of hell on earth. He has a detailists eye, and whether it's the slick of oil on water, the tactile pleasure of a cold can of beer, or the sound of cloven hooves on marble he awakens each scene with particulars. Havana is a city being slowly strangled by economics and regressing to the corruption and lust for the tourist dollar of the Batista era.
Mr. Cruz Smith's characters are neither black nor white, but the moral gray of humans under stress. Yes, the good guys are good, but they are also flawed, and that accounts for much of their attraction. Renko, Orfelia his Cuban detective inamorata, George Washington Walls an ex-pat US radical, and the sundry other characters in this well written, literate, mystery are all worth watching. Mr. Cruz Smith doesn't sketch, he paints.
Settle back, read, and you are there - have a good time in hell!
Book Review: An engaging thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
This is another good one from the best-selling author of Gorky Park. Smith seems to like strange protagonists, considering that his primary market is the United States. His hero here is a Russian national, Arkady Renko, who has come to Cuba to identify the body of a Russian acquaintance whom the Cubans all seem to think is a spy. The suicidal Renko is a prosecutor's investigator in Russia who has recently been devastated by the death of Irina, his lover, who was dosed with ampicillin, to which she was allergic, by an inept Russian medico.
The Cuban's love for Russians has turned to hatred as a result of the ruble tap being turned off, and the fall of the USSR.and subsequent democratization of Russia. The Policia of the Nacional Revolucion (PNR) has scheduled no investigation into the death of his acquaintance, Sirgei Pribluda,, and the Russian Consulate wants nothing so much as to ignore the whole thing. Renko's reluctance to certify that the bloated remains, unrecognizable after two weeks in an innertube in the bay, is actually Pribluda adds to the tension.
And, that's only the beginning! His Cuban counterpart, the co-protagonist, is also unusual: a black female Cuban police detective who has her own emotional disturbances to deal with.
This is a well-written, interesting story, and was chosen by the New York Times as a "notable book." It held my interest to the end.
Joseph H. Pierre
Author of The Road to Damascus: Our Journey Through Eternity