Soviet Spotlight: Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith

After having good luck with Martin Cruz Smith’s 2019 thriller The Siberian Dilemma I thought I’d follow it up with Red Square, a much earlier Cruz Smith novel. Published back in 1992 it picks up not long after the conclusion of Polar Star. In Red Square Arkady Renko has been welcomed back into the fold and once again fighting  crime in Moscow. But the world he knew as portrayed in Gorky Park, where the the Communist Party reigned supreme is long gone. Despite Gorbachev’s attempts at Perestroika and Glasnost the once-mighty USSR is now a shadow of its former self. Like some latter-day sick man of Europe the Soviet Union’s economy is in free fall, crime and corruption are out of control and the former superpower is beginning to unravel as various Soviet Republics threaten to bolt right and left.

After a car bomb murders one of Renko’s informants our intrepid hero begins uncovering a sordid trail that will lead him from his native Moscow to Munich and eventually a recently-reunified Berlin. Along the way he crosses path with an old flame, a former Soviet defector now working for the Munich-based Radio Liberty as a Russian language newscaster. Typical of an Arkady Renko thriller the more he digs the more learns he’s up against powerful and deadly adversaries wiling to stop at nothing to keep him from uncovering the truth.

Like other thrillers by Cruz Smith I enjoyed Red Square. The thing I liked most about this particular installment of the series is how it played out against the backdrop of a collapsing USSR. Alas, I have no complaints and would love to read another Arkady Renko thriller.