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Product Description
The body, what was left of it, was drifting in Havana Bay the morning Arkady arrived from Moscow. The Cubans insisted that the body was his friend Pribluda, but Arkady wasn't so sure. The Communist world has shrunk to Cuba. Havana is a city of empty stones and talking drums, Karl Marx and sharp machetes - not welcoming place if you're a Russian, particularly if you're a Russian investigating the death of another Russian. But Arkady is used to being unpopular. He's even used to losing friends. "Havana Bay" is the fourth novel to feature Arkady Renko. The previous three, "Gorky Park", "Polar Star", and "Red Square" are also available in Pan. "If there's more intoxicating and intriguing setting for a thriller than Moscow, Smith has found it in Havana. Sheer class", - "Mirror". "I hope a copy of this top-notch thriller reaches Castro as he wises up to the mobsters currently at his gate", - "Independent". "As in "Gorky Park", Cruz Smith is outstanding on background. The feel of Havana is sensuously rendered", - "Sunday Times".
Amazon.com Review
In this fourth book in Martin Cruz Smith's splendid series, an amiable Irish American gangster explains to Arkady Renko what he and the other 84 wanted Americans hiding out in Cuba do with themselves. "We try to stay alive. Useful. Tell me, Arkady, what are you doing here?" "The same," says Renko--and it's true. His life as a Russian cop has become so bleak and lonely that he takes any opportunity to shake things up, even spending his own savings to fly to Havana when an old colleague is found dead--floating inside an inner tube after night-fishing in Havana Bay. Renko sets out to make himself useful in this shabby, fascinating, haunted country whose inhabitants look on Russians with the cold disdain of survivors of a nasty divorce.
As he did so well in Gorky Park, Smith again makes Renko very much a classic Russian hero in temperament and tradition, but also the eternal outsider. He is at times close to the edge of despair--but his trip to Havana restores his natural curiosity and life force. In this hot Havana, ripe with the fruity smell of sex, Renko keeps his Moscow overcoat on--until an equally idealistic and out-of-place young female cop gets him to loosen up. There's an unusually complex plot, even for the sly strand-spinner Smith. He raises baffling questions: Why would a group of military plotters order illegal lobsters in a fancy restaurant and then not eat them? And his descriptions of Cuban life are dead-on, reminding us on every page what a superb stylist he is. --Dick Adler
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