A worthy sequel to Gorky Park. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

I thought the description of the boat was too convoluted at times, as well as some of the motives for the main characters that bordered on the not making sense. I really liked Karp's character as the antagonist, miles better than Osbourne in the previous book. The whole premise of the book is however hard to believe. The writing style is unchanged and one of the best aspects of this book.

Arkadiy Renko ex special investigator in Moscow has fallen on harder times. He's ended up on a trawler, the Polar Star. His colleagues aren't are of his background and when a murder transpires he starts to investigate.

I love the Renko series. He's a really down at heel cop who sails close to the wind, his father was a general in Stalins government so giving him some freedom where lesser men would be put away. Smith describes Moscow, Russia and the culture very well. If you like a detective series with a difference try these.

'Polar Star', #2 in the Inspector Arkady Renko series, is a terrific story! I think it way more superior to the first book in the series, [b:Gorky Park|762806|Gorky Park (Arkady Renko, #1)|Martin Cruz Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390189430s/762806.jpg|90322]. It can be a standalone read, but Renko's backstory, which is referred to occasionally in this novel, is described in its entirety in the first novel. Missing from this narrative is exactly why Renko, an educated man who was an excellent Moscow police detective, is now on the run and hiding from the close attention of various Soviet political authorities and no longer a police inspector.

Arkady's skills are being wasted in his current job cutting up fish on the 'slime line' of the fish processor ship, Polar Star.

From Wikipedia:

"Some factory ships can also function as mother ships. The basic idea of a mother ship is that it can carry small fishing boats that return to the mother ship with their catch. But the idea extends to include factory trawlers supporting a fleet of smaller catching vessels that are not carried on board. They serve as the main ship in a fleet operating in waters a great distance from their home ports."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_ship

The Polar Star carries 300 people as crew, 50 of them women.

Most of them are processing the fish:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_processing

Renko is in survival mode, quietly earning a living in jobs which hopefully are under the radar of people he pissed off in Moscow. He is considered politically unreliable by important Communist Party members, a death sentence in the Soviet Union. Renko insisted on solving cases which involve prostitution, smuggling, murder and political corruption - all of which are considered impossible under a Communist government.

It is two years after the events in 'Gorky Park', and after many hard labor jobs in Siberia which have served to muscle up the Inspector's body, he is now cutting fish up on a boat on its way to Dutch Harbor, occasionally stopping to swing aboard the fish caught by smaller American fishing boats to prepare the fish for later sale and distribution in America.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unalaska,_Alaska

(Gentle reader, my mother, an Aleut, went to school near Dutch Harbor, as she was born on Kodiak Island.)

Fate steps in to change Renko's preferred state of intentional anonymity - Polar Star crewmember Zina Patiashvili's body unexpectedly falls out of an American fishing boat's net being emptied into the Russian ship's hold for processing. How did the Russian crew member's body get in another ship's fishing net? Was she murdered? If so, by who and why? Renko is reluctant to take the job of investigating the death because he knows solving it will not be welcomed by anyone, but Captain Victor Marchuk gives him no choice; Marchuk has no choice - American monitors are on board the Polar Star per international agreements. No one else on board has the required skill set to find out what happened.

As Renko expected, he soon is experiencing near-death 'accidents'. Gulp. It is a good thing he is in such good shape, but even so, he is not safe from fish knives, which everyone has, and bullets, not to mention the freezing cold of the Arctic waters just outside of the suddenly too-small ship of which he is literally trapped.

Solving the murder is worse than being elbow-deep in fish slime!

I thoroughly enjoyed this second book in the Arkady Renko series, and I can't wait to read Red Square next. I did not think Polar Star was as strong a mystery as Gorky Park, but I truly love the Arkady Renko character, and Cruz Smith's exceptional ability to transport you ... whether it's to Moscow, to Siberia, or the Bering Sea.

Martin Cruz Smith may be American, but he writes like a Russian. I've never before read a non-Eastern European able to portray the Russian/Eastern-block communist mood with such insight and accuracy. When I first encountered Gorky Park, I couldn't believe Cruz Smith wasn't raised in Stalin's USSR--his humor, sensibilities, language, characters are simply native/perfect. Polar Star maintains the Russian authenticity.

That, of course, is the highest praise. And to top it off, I am madly in love with Arkady, the unflappable, amused, skeptical state investigator turned Siberian worker, one of the most existentially aware characters in all of literature, and absolutely, perfectly Soviet (disclaimer: I'm Romanian and I couldn't tell before reading Smith's bio that this wasn't translated from the Russian. I also have a thing for Russians/communist deadpan/stories about pre-1989 Eastern Europe/the North Pole/snow/winter).

Minus one star for gratuitous violence and sex towards the end (other than that, these books are so intellectual. The Arnold scenes are unnecessary and spoil the otherwise heady mood).

A delightful novel. Martin Cruz Smith's Renko is a lovely character, very human, and very smart as well. Smith makes a very interesting portrait of the live aboard a big fishing-factory ship. In there, the now fallen in disgrace Renko is motivated to find the killers of a young female worker in the ship. The branches and knots of the story are very interesting. A very good book.