NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “Sharply, evocatively written and elaborately plotted . . . [Red Square] should find as many friends as did Gorky Park.”—The Washington Post Book World
Back from exile in the hellish reaches of the Soviet Union, homicide investigator Arkady Renko discovers that his country, his Moscow, even his job, are nearly dead. But...

In this richly complex mystery, best-selling author Martin Cruz Smith paints a stunning backdrop of dazzling excesses and stark deprivation. Havana Bay portrays soulful Russian detective Arkady Renko exploring the dark side of Cuba as he investigates the fatal accident of a Soviet comrade. Still reeling from his wife's untimely death in Moscow, Arkady flies to Cuba to identify an old colleague who has been pulled from Havana Bay. After he points out...

With his wife in the hospital, Porfiry Rostnikov tries to protect Moscow from chaos Porfiry and Sarah Rostnikov have been in love since the end of World War II, growing old together as the Soviet Union lurches towards modernity. Sarah is recovering from a brain operation, her police inspector husband at her side, when a bearlike man staggers into her hospital room. Hulking, naked, and insensible, he is about to leap out the window when Rostnikov talks...

"In Tatiana, Martin Cruz Smith, 'the master of the international thriller' (The New York Times) creates the most compelling heroine of his career and the most realistic, damning portrait of modern Russia in contemporary literature. One of the iconic investigators of contemporary fiction, Arkady Renko -- cynnical, analytical, and quietly subversive -- has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation...

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly...

When Inspector Rostnikov arrives in the town of Arkush with Emil Karpo, the policeman nicknamed ?the Vampire?, he finds a community stunned by the murder of the outspoken Father Merhum. But it is the priest's cryptic last words that make Rostnikov wonder if this was indeed a political assassination or a murder with a motive closer to home. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Rostnikov's other associates are deep into the hunt for an Arab girl everyone wants but...

In the 1960s, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. But the Soviet Union is history, and Gagarin?s glory is long gone. For the men and women aboard the decaying Mir space station, life is an unending series of near-disasters. During one such breakdown, cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka asks ground control to contact Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov if anything happens to him. The cosmonaut returns...

"Journalist Tatiana Petrovna is on the move. Arkady Renko, iconic Moscow investigator and Tatiana's part-time lover, hasn't seen her since she left on assignment over a month ago. When she doesn't arrive on her scheduled train, he's positive something is wrong. No one else thinks Renko should be worried--Tatiana is known to disappear during deep assignments--but he knows her enemies all too well and the criminal lengths they'll go to keep her quiet....