Martin Cruz Smith
Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include Gorky Park, Stallion Gate, Nightwing, Polar Star, Stalin’s Ghost, Rose, December 6, Tatiana, The Girl from Venice, and The Siberian Dilemma. 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.
All Books By Martin Cruz Smith
Dec-06
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: John Slattery
- Length: 5 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2002
- Language: English
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3.82(1986 ratings)
Amid the imperialist fervor of late 1941 Tokyo, Harry Niles is a man with a mission — self-preservation. But Niles was raised by missionary parents and educated in the shadows of Tokyo’s underworld — making his loyalties as dubious as his business dealings.
Now, on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Niles must decide where his true allegiances lie, as he tries to juggle his Japanese mistress and an affair with the wife of a British diplomat; avoid a modern-day samurai who is honor-bound to kill him; and survive the Japanese high command, whose plans for conquest may just dictate his survival.
Set in a maelstrom of personal temptations and mortal enemies, with a remarkable anti-hero caught in a land he can never call his own, DECEMBER 6 is a triumph of imagination, history, and riveting storytelling.
Dec-06
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.82(1986 ratings)
From the New York Times bestselling author of Gorky Park and Havana Bay comes another gripping novel of loyalty, betrayal, and intrigue on the eve of the greatest military conflict in the history of mankind…December 6.
Amid the imperialist fervor of late 1941 Tokyo, Harry Niles is a man with a mission — self-preservation. But Niles was raised by missionary parents and educated in the shadows of Tokyo’s underworld — making his loyalties as dubious as his business dealings.
Now, on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Niles must decide where his true allegiances lie, as he tries to juggle his Japanese mistress and an affair with the wife of a British diplomat; avoid a modern-day samurai who is honor-bound to kill him; and survive the Japanese high command, whose plans for conquest may just dictate his survival.
Set in a maelstrom of personal temptations and mortal enemies, with a remarkable anti-hero caught in a land he can never call his own, DECEMBER 6 is a triumph of imagination, history, and riveting storytelling.
Gorky Park
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Henry Strozier
- Length: 29 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.04(62650 ratings)
The Arkady Renko book that started it all: the #1 bestseller Gorky Park, an espionage classic that begins the series, by Martin Cruz Smith, “the master of the international thriller” (The New York Times).
It begins with a triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything.
A wonderfully textured, vivid look behind the Iron Curtain, Gorky Park is a tense, atmospheric, and memorable crime story. “Once one gets going, one doesn’t want to stop…The action is gritty, the plot complicated, and the overriding quality is intelligence” (The Washington Post). The first in a classic series, Gorky Park “reminds you just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be” (The New York Times Book Review).
Havana Bay
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Frank Muller
- Length: 23 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.83(6480 ratings)
From Martin Cruz Smith, the internationally bestselling author of Gorky Park, comes a mystery that reaches international proportions in this entertaining fourth title in the Arkady Renko series.
Former Inspector for the Moscow Militsiya, Arkady Renko, is summoned to Cuba to identify a liquefying corpse, dragged from the oily waters of Havana Bay. Renko finds himself in a decaying country, the final recess of Communism–a place where Russia is despised, exotic rituals take precedence and unexpected danger meets bewildering contradictions. After a harrowing experience that has left Renko on the verge of suicide, this mystery leads him on a trail of deceit that reaches international proportions, and gives him a reason to relish his own life again.
Independence Square
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 5 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2023
- Language: English
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4.06(1144 ratings)
Detective Arkaday Renko—“one of the most compelling figures in modern fiction” (USA TODAY)—risks his life when he heads to Ukraine shortly before the Russian invasion to find an anti-Putin activist who has mysteriously disappeared.
Martin Cruz Smith has written nine previous novels featuring Arkady Renko, one of modern detective fiction’s most popular characters. These novels, beginning with 1981’s international sensation Gorky Park, have collectively traced Russia’s evolution over the last half-century. Now, with Independence Square, Smith focuses on the fraught and frenzied days leading up to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
It’s June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt boss has relegated him to a desk job. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s Disease.
This is an ingenious autobiographical conceit, as Martin Cruz Smith has Parkinson’s, and is able through Arkady to movingly describe his own experience with the disease. Parkinson’s hasn’t stopped Smith from his work, and neither does it stop Arkady. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case.
An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina’s roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. The search leads them to Kyiv, where rumblings of an armed conflict grow louder. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance. And as he gets closer to locating Karina, Arkady discovers something that threatens his life as well as the lives of both Elena and Tatiana.
Few fiction writers have better captured contemporary Russia with more insight or authenticity than Martin Cruz Smith. He does the same here for Ukraine and the events that preceded Russia’s invasion. Independence Square is a timely and a uniquely personal mystery novel-meets-political thriller by a master of the form.
Nightwing
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 20 hours 30 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.46(806 ratings)
From Martin Cruz Smith, the internationally bestselling author of Gorky Park, comes a reissue of Nightwing, the million-copy bestseller that Stephen King called “one of the best horror novels in the last twenty years.”
As darkness gathers, the sky is filled with frantic motion and maddening murmurs. In an effort to end the world, an unhappy, aging Native American shaman invokes the Hopi god of death. Those around him remain skeptical, dismissing him as crazy old man. Then they discover his mutilated, bloody body and soon other similarly disfigured bodies begin to appear. Horses, sheep, cattle–no living thing is safe. But what is causing the horrible deaths? Deputy Sheriff Duran is called back to the reservation to investigate. Immediately, Duran recognizes the significance of the shaman’s spell and, with the help of two scientists, he works to combat the supernatural scourge–before there’s nothing left to save.
Written “in the tradition of Stephen King” (Kirkus Reviews), Nightwing is part love triangle, part Native American case study, part supernatural thriller…and “genuinely horrifying” (The Washington Post Book World).
Polar Star
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Frank Muller
- Length: 22 hours 23 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.97(8943 ratings)
In the second installment in the Arkady Renko series from internationally bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith, Renko goes up against the Soviet bureaucracy in a complex international web and discovering more than he bargained for.
Arkady Renko, former Chief Investigator of the Moscow Town Prosecutor’s Office, made too many enemies and lost the favor of his party. After a self-imposed exile in Siberia, Renko toils on the ‘slime line’ of a factory ship in the Bering Sea. But when an adventurous Georgian woman comes up with the day’s catch, the signs of murder are undeniable. Up against the Soviet bureaucracy in a complex international web, Renko must again become the obsessed, dedicated cop he once was. And in doing so, he discovers much more than he bargained for.
Red Square
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Frank Muller
- Length: 29 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.97(5646 ratings)
Back from exile, Renko must defeat the powerful black-market crime lords in this third installment to the Arkady Renko series by internationally bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith.
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 his enemies are very much alive, and foremost among them are the powerful black-market crime lords of the Russian mafia. Hounded by this terrifying new underworld, chased by the ruthless minions of the newly rich and powerful, and tempted by his great love, defector Irina Asanova, Arkady can only hope desperately for escape. But fate has something else in store.
Stalin’s Ghost
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Henry Strozier
- Length: 11 hours 15 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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3.78(4633 ratings)
Detective Arkady Renko returns to Moscow in the internationally bestselling series about Russian crimes, broken hearts, and the mysteries of the soul.
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 better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko’s quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.
The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin’s. In these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs — the Red Diggers and Black Diggers — collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises.
Stalin’s Ghost
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Ron McLarty
- Length: 6 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2007
- Language: English
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3.78(4633 ratings)
Detective Arkady Renko returns to Moscow in the internationally bestselling series about Russian crimes, broken hearts, and the mysteries of the soul.
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 better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko’s quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.
The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin’s. In these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs — the Red Diggers and Black Diggers — collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises.
Stallion Gate
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Frank Muller
- Length: 17 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.66(1400 ratings)
From internationally bestselling author Martin Cruz Smith comes an epic story of a physicist, a general, a spy, and a hero who will change history forever.
In a New Mexico blizzard, four men cross a barbed-wire fence at Stallion Gate to select a test site for the first atomic weapon. They are Oppenheimer, the physicist; Groves, the general; Fuchs, the spy. The fourth man is Sergeant Joe Pena, a hero, informer, fighter, musician, Indian. These four men–and a cast of soldiers, roughnecks and scientists–will change history forever.
Tatiana
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Henry Strozier
- Length: 8 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.74(3138 ratings)
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.”
The Girl From Venice
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Zach Appelman
- Length: 16 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.38(5091 ratings)
From Martin Cruz Smith, “a master of the international thriller” (The New York Times), a suspenseful World War II love story set against the beauty, mystery, and danger of occupied Venice.
Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman’s body floating in the lagoon and soon discovers that she is still alive and in trouble.
Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the Wehrmacht. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia rather than hand her over to the Nazis. This act of kindness leads them into the world of Partisans, random executions, the arts of forgery and high explosives, Mussolini’s broken promises, the black market and gold, and, everywhere, the enigmatic maze of the Venice Lagoon.
With Martin Cruz Smith’s trademark suspense, action, and breathtaking romance during World War II Italy, The Girl from Venice is “a gripping evocation of a beautiful nation and of two people, trapped in the lunacy of war and the bravery it can inspire” (The Seattle Times).
The Siberian Dilemma
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 12 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.76(774 ratings)
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Gorky Park and Tatiana comes a breathtaking new novel about investigator Arkady Renko–“one of the most compelling figures in modern fiction” (USA TODAY)–who travels deep into Siberia to find missing journalist Tatiana Petrovna.
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.
Renko embarks on a dangerous journey to find Tatiana and bring her back. From the banks of Lake Baikal to rundown Chita, Renko slowly learns that Tatiana has been profiling the rise of political dissident Mikhail Kuznetsov, a golden boy of modern oil wealth and the first to pose a true threat to Putin’s rule in over a decade. Though Kuznetsov seems like the perfect candidate to take on the corruption in Russian politics, his reputation becomes clouded when Boris Benz, his business partner and best friend, turns up dead. In a land of shamans and brutally cold nights, oligarchs wealthy on northern oil, and sea monsters that are said to prowl the deepest lake in the world, Renko needs all his wits about him to get Tatiana out alive.
The Washington Post has said “Martin Cruz Smith is that rare phenomenon: a popular and well-regarded crime novelist who is also a writer of real distinction.” In the latest continuation of his unforgettable series, he brings us to the inside world of shadowy political figures and big wig oil oligarchs providing us with an authentic view of contemporary Russia, infused with his trademark wit.
Three Stations
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Ron McLarty
- Length: 7 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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4(1 ratings)
Arkady Renko returns in a gripping mystery involving a kidnapped baby with a mysterious teenage mother, a murdered prostitute, police corruption, and as always, the complex, impenetrable landscape of modern-day Moscow.
Investigator Arkady Renko is back on the scene, with a whole new set of problems: his prosecutor keeps him without work, he’s struggling with the onset of middle age, and his friend Victor is arrested for public drunkenness. Zhenya, the fifteen-year-old chess prodigy whom Renko tries to parent, returns to the scene when he witnesses a shocking crime.
As always, Smith’s Three Stations is filled with intriguing, flawed characters and set in Moscow, a city so intricate and three-dimensional it’s practically a character itself.
Wolves Eat Dogs
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Ron McLarty
- Length: 6 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2004
- Language: English
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3.91(6735 ratings)
A Moscow detective is sent to Chernobyl for a frightening case in the most spectacular entry yet in Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series.
In his groundbreaking Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith created an iconic detective of contemporary fiction. Quietly subversive, brilliantly analytical, and haunted by melancholy, Arkady Renko survived, barely, the journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find his transformed nation just as obsessed with corruption and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship.
In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case yet: the death of one of Russia’s new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion—closed to the world since 1986’s nuclear disaster. It is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko’s journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure.
Wolves Eat Dogs
- By: Martin Cruz Smith
- Narrator: Henry Strozier
- Length: 11 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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3.91(6735 ratings)
A Moscow detective is sent to Chernobyl for a frightening case in the most spectacular entry yet in Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series.
In his groundbreaking Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith created an iconic detective of contemporary fiction. Quietly subversive, brilliantly analytical, and haunted by melancholy, Arkady Renko survived, barely, the journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find his transformed nation just as obsessed with corruption and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship.
In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case yet: the death of one of Russia’s new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion–closed to the world since 1986’s nuclear disaster. It is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko’s journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure.