Post-Soviet thrills reading: "Tatiana" by Martin Cruz Smith

I wonder if I get two books mixed up in my recollection: Archangel by Robert Harris and Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith. In fact, I don't wonder, I know I do. I read them around the same time a few years ago and they kind of blurred together a bit.

All this to say that this perhaps accounts for my perhaps excessive expectations of Tatiana, the latest Russian tale from Cruz Smith based on the character of Senior Investigator Arkady Renko. Put another way, I was maybe - and unreasonably - expecting something more Harris-like.

I'm not saying this is not an enjoyable book, just to say not to expect much more than a run-of-the-mill thriller, complete with crusty-but-heroic cop, courageous (and beautiful) investigative journalist, awkward-but-talented family member, cynical-but-loyal side-kick, and, of course, a whole cast of hit men, glossy and not-so-glossy mafia bosses, bent policemen and corrupt officials.

The plot has its thrills and spills, twists and turns, as you would expect, and they keep the pages turning. In the end, as ever in this kind of hard-bitten thriller, the good guys triumph in a pyrrhic and rather inconclusive kind of way and that's that.

Well, not quite. There was a dimension of the book which did endear it too me a little more than the plot line alone would justify, the setting. Not so much the juxtaposition of gangster-bling and grubby dereliction which have become emblematic of Putin's Russia, but the specific location of much of the action, Kaliningrad. This weird Russian exclave, a Cold War relic left adrift several hundred kilometres from the country of which it is part, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, holds a certain fascination for me.


I once had to read up on it pretty damn quick, as, for reasons too long to relate, I was once called upon to act as an external examiner for a Master's thesis on the subject of Kaliningrad. I was told it did not matter that - as I informed them - I knew nothing about the subject, but I thought it prudent to know something. As a result, Cruz Smith's research held no terrors for me; I even felt ahead of him on a point or two. But more than that, the place just has to be fascinating, right? Once a closed Soviet city, now a geopolitical anomaly inside EU territory, a Russian presence in a region where a Russian presence is never a neutral matter (as visits to Estonia and Latvia, but not yet Lithuania, have taught me), what can possibly go wrong?

Anyway, whether or not you share my interest in Kaliningrad, I suppose my final recommendation is the same. It's a summer read, like thousands of others. Still I enjoyed it, and no struggles with the metaphysical implications of the book such as those encountered with its predecessor!

And a review written much more quickly.