Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by april_does_feral_sometimes
Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith
4.0
'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!
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!