Tatiana, Martin Cruz Smith
Tatiana, Martin Cruz Smith
2 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Tatiana
An Arkady Renko Novel

Author: Martin Cruz Smith

Narrator: Henry Strozier

Unabridged: 8 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/12/2013


Synopsis

Martin Cruz Smith's “masterful” (USA TODAY) and “irresistible” (People) New York Times bestseller and Washington Post notable book of the year: Arkady Renko must connect the dots among a Russian journalist’s mysterious death, corrupt politicians, murderous gangsters, and brazen bureaucrats.

Arkady Renko, one of the iconic investigators of contemporary fiction, has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation as obsessed with secrecy and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In Tatiana, the melancholy hero unravels a mystery as complex and dangerous as modern Russia itself.

The reporter Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow the same week that a mob billionaire is shot and buried with the trappings due a lord. The trail leads to Kaliningrad, a Cold War “secret city” that is separated by hundreds of miles from the rest of Russia. The more Arkady delves into Tatiana’s past, the more she leads him into a surreal world of wandering sand dunes, abandoned children, and a notebook written in the personal code of a dead translator. Finally, in a lethal race to uncover what the translator knew, Renko makes a startling discovery that draws him still deeper into Tatiana’s past—and, paradoxically, into Russia’s future, where bulletproof cars, poets, corruption of the Baltic Fleet, and a butcher for hire combine to give Kaliningrad the “distinction” of having the highest crime rate in Russia.

More than a mystery, Tatiana is Martin Cruz Smith’s most ambitious and politically daring novel since Gorky Park. It is a story rich in character, black humor, and romance, with an insight that is the hallmark of a writer The New York Times has called “endlessly entertaining and deeply serious…[not merely] our best writer of suspense, but of one of our best writers, period.”

About Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include Gorky ParkStallion GateNightwingPolar StarStalin’s GhostRoseDecember 6TatianaThe Girl from VeniceThe Siberian Dilemma, and Independence Square. He is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award and Britain’s Golden Dagger Award, and a winner of the Premio Piemonte Giallo Internazionale. He lives in California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on July 01, 2020

In this eighth book in the 'Arkady Renko' series, the Russian police detective looks into the death of an investigative journalist. The book can be read as a standalone. ***** Investigator Arkady Renko is attending the funeral of businessman/mafia leader Grisha Grigorenko in Moscow when he encounters......more

Goodreads review by Kemper on April 19, 2014

Among the many jobs I’d never want is working as a journalist in Russia, and probably right behind that one on the list is being a detective in Russia. Moscow police investigator Arkday Renko is back in his eighth book that finds him getting mixed up with the events surrounding the death of famous in......more

Goodreads review by Pam on September 10, 2022

Martin Cruz Smith’s Tatiana takes place well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and into the Putin era. It is a reasonably good story but I miss the earlier books like Gorky Park. The policeman, Renko, is now dealing with the new Russian mobsters and crass oligarchs of the 21st century. He’s s......more