Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: January 03, 2006
Publishing house: Pocket
Sale Popularity Level: 272459
Studio: Pocket
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All night earthmovers tore at the old city and dug widening pools of light to raise a modern, vertical Moscow more like Houston or Dubai. It was a Moscow that Pasha Ivanov had helped to create, a shifting landscape of tectonic plates and lava flows and fatal missteps...Pasha Ivanov, one of Russia's richest oligarchs, is lying dead on the pavement outside his luxury high-rise apartment in Moscow. His death, it seems, is a straightforward case of suicide. Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, however, has never been one to take evidence at face value and there's something puzzling him that he simply refuses to ignore: a mountain of salt found in Ivanov's wardrobe...Renko's investigations take him to the notorious exclusion zone, the area around Chernobyl deserted and forgotten for almost two decades. 'The Zone' is a place of mystery, danger and sometimes - unimaginable beauty. When the body of Lev Timofeyev, Pasha Ivanov's former research partner, is discovered in a contaminated cemetery, it is only the beginning of Renko's journey into this labyrinthine netherworld of crime - and an investigation that is about to uncover some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets.
Amazon.com Review:
'Why would anyone jump out a window with a saltshaker?' A good question, especially when the suicide victim is Pasha Ivanov, a Moscow physicist-turned-billionaire businessman--a 'New Russian' poster boy, if ever there was one--with several homes, a leggy 20-year-old girlfriend ('the kind [of blonde] who could summon the attention of a breeze'), and every reason to be contented in his middle age. So, wonders Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, in Martin Cruz Smith's Wolves Eat Dogs, what provoked Ivanov to take a header from his stylish 10th-floor apartment? And how does it relate to the shaker clutched in his dead hand or the hillock of table salt found on his closet floor?
Renko, introduced in Smith's 1981 bestseller, Gorky Park, is a cop well out of sync with quickly changing Russian society, 'a difficult investigator, a holdover from the Soviet era, a man on the skids' whose determination to do more than go through the motions of criminal inquiries inevitably exasperates his superiors. Thus, when this saturnine detective declines to accept the verdict that Ivanov did himself in--who peppered that salt around the capitalist's premises, Renko still wants to know, and what about rumors of a security breach at Ivanov's apartment building?--he is exiled to the Ukrainian Zone of Exclusion, the 'radioactive wasteland' surrounding Chernobyl, site of a notorious 1986 nuclear disaster and the place where, only a week after Ivanov's demise, his company's senior vice-president is found with his throat slit. There, among cynical scientists, entrepreneurial scavengers, and predators both two- and four-legged--an exclusive coterie of the rejected--Renko chews over the crimes on his plate. Unfortunately, the dosimeter that warns him of radiation exposure at Chernobyl does not also protect him from a pair of malevolent brothers, or a 'damaged' woman doctor offering him mutually assured disappointment.
Smith has a keen eye for the comical quirks of modern-day Russia--its chaotic roadways, voracious appetite for post-communist luxuries, and evolving ethics ('Russians used to kill for women or power, real reasons. Now they kill for money'). And this story's bleakly beautiful Ukrainian backdrop nicely complements the desperate hope of Renko's task. Still, the greatest strength of Wolves Eat Dogs (Smith's fifth series installment, after Havana Bay) is its characters, especially Arkady Renko, who despite his lugubrious nature continues to show a heart as expansive and unfathomable as the Siberia steppe. --J. Kingston Pierce
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Rated by buyers -
I was glad to follow along once again with my sturdy investigator Arkady Renko, and to be able to return for a Russian history lesson. I thought this was a complex story that I had to read carefully, but Martin Cruz Smith ensured that all the parts were pulled together to make for an exciting read. I wouldn't rate Wolves as one of Mr. Smith's best novels, but it still was a fantastic read. Highly recommend to all Martin Cruz Smith fans.
Rated by buyers 
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Martin Cruz Smith never lets me down!!!! I would not call it one of his best, however very satisfied and enjoyed the read very very much!!! Have recommended this book to many MCS's fans, and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for one of the best, exciting reads!!
Rated by buyers 
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Last year, I read Smith's Havana Bay and found it lacking. As I approached Wolves Eat Dogs, I was sincerely hoping that it would be closer to Gorky Park than Havana Bay. Alas, it was not. Perhaps it is not fair to compare all of Smith's works with my 25-year memory of Gorky Park, which I thought was fantastic. Renko's sense of melancholy and the depressing portrayal of life in Chernobl was simply too much for me. The usual zip simply was not present. I have Stalin's Ghost on the bookshelf. Hopefully it will prove to be closer to Gorky Park that this was. If not, I will have to pass on Smith's future works.
Rated by buyers -
This novel is a combination of Soviet history, travelogue, and murder mystery. I would argue that the weakest part of the story is the murder mystery- Renko spends much of his time in the Exclusion Zone, by his own admission, accomplishing nothing. And then the author employs the shopworn technique of the baddie explaining everything to Renko just before he is to kill him. The novel earns four stars for its indictment of the Soviets' monstrous indifference to the population in the wake of Chernobyl, as well as Smith's depiction of life in the Zone's radioactive villages.
Rated by buyers -
A billionaire in the "New Russia" after the collapse of Communism commits suicide. Homicide investigator Arkady Renko once again inherits the unpopular case; he thinks that something drove the billionaire to do it.
Renko is now in his late forties and alone in life: his parents both committed suicide long ago, he is unmarried, and he has no children. Somehow he gets burdened with an 11 year-old boy in a children's shelter who has no interests other than chess and fairy tales.
He manages to keep his link with the kid, communicating with him by phone, as he's sent to the bizarre wasteland of the Chernobyl evacuation land itself to investigate events that may have precipitated the billionaire's suicide. Some of his phone conversations with the boy are pricelessly funny.
Meanwhile, Renko tries to fit in with the weird community of research scientists, old villagers, and scavengers and get answers to his questions. Once again, he is a fascinating character: modest, perceptive, and possessing a fine sense of grey humor.
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