Independence Square

December 1, 2022

In The Lock-Up, Booker Prize winner Banville returns to 1950s Dublin, where pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford are investigating the murder of a young history scholar when her sister points them to a powerful German family newly arrived in town after World War II (100,000-copy first printing). In Barclay's The Lie Maker, struggling author Jack is offered big money to write false histories for people in the witness protection program and now has the means to find his father, who vanished into the program when Jack was just a child (100,000-copy first printing). Bentley's Tom Clancy Flash Point gives Jack Ryan Jr. a terrorist plot to crack, but it turns out to be part of a larger, grimmer scheme. On the island paradise of Prospera, residents live contentedly until they're warned by a monitor embedded in their forearms that it's time for renewal and board the ferry for the Nursery, but The Ferryman (and some island resisters) begin to suspect that all is not as benevolent as it seems; a stand-alone from Cronin, seven years after he wrapped up his "Passage" series. With Bad, Bad Seymour Brown, New York Times best-selling author Isaacs brings back former FBI agent Corie Geller and her father, a retired NYPD cop, who must solve a cold case to prevent the murder of the crime's only survivor--unassuming professor April Brown, whose father laundered money for the Russian mob. Lawton's Moscow Exile moves from 1950s Washington, DC, where British-born socialite Charlotte has a pack of secrets to pass on to old flame Charlie Leigh Hunt at the British embassy, and 1969, with Joe Wilderness trapped behind the Iron Curtain and the stories converging in Berlin. Maden's Untitled new Cussler adventure brings back Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon for more fun and games. In Nakamura's latest, two detectives investigate the murder of The Rope Artist--an instructor in kinbaku, a form of rope bondage with both spiritual and sexual overtones--with Togashi finding himself pulled toward his own unorthodox desires and straight-arrow colleague Hayama seeking the truth in a case that's getting out of control. In The 23rd Midnight, Patterson and Paetro team up for another visit with the Women's Murder Club, as someone copycats the methods of a serial killer jailed by Det. Lindsay Boxer and profiled in a best seller by reporter Cindy Thomas, both women's murder clubbers. In multi-award-finalist Pochada's Sing Her Down, the imprisoned Diosmary Sandoval suspects that cellmate Florence "Florida" Baum isn't the innocent victim she claims to be and hounds her relentlessly when both are unexpectedly released (100,000-copy first printing). National Book Award finalist Powers (The Yellow Birds) draws A Line in the Sand with his first thriller, about former Iraqi interpreter Arman Bajalan, working at the Sea Breeze Motel in Norfolk, VA, after having barely survived the assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, who discovers a dead body on the beach (60,000-copy first printing). When her roommate is killed at the first party they throw at their Baltimore-area apartment, Morgan learns that she was the intended victim of the assailant, who steals each target's Identity and then kills her; a million-copy first printing for Roberts. After more than four decades of thrillers reflecting Soviet/Russian events, Smith drops longtime protagonist Arkady Renko in Independence Square in Kyiv, where Renko has gone to find the anti-Putin daughter of an acquaintance. Meanwhile, Renko discovers that he has Parkinson's Disease, as does Smith.

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Starred review from February 27, 2023
Bestseller Smith’s stellar 10th mystery featuring Arkady Renko (after 2019’s The Siberian Dilemma) finds the maverick Russian investigator working for Moscow’s Office of Prosecution in June 2021. Relegated by his boss to desk duty, he serves as the office’s departmental liaison officer and attends pointless meetings where he’s “neither wanted nor needed.” He gets a chance to exercise his investigative skills when Fyodor Abakov, a bodybuilder who runs protection rackets in the city, asks him to trace his missing daughter, Karina, a violinist in a string quartet. That Karina is a member of an anti-Putin organization, Forum for Democracy, has led Abakov to fear that the government is behind her disappearance. Renko agrees to help, and his inquiry eventually takes him to Ukraine and Crimea in search of leads. His efforts are complicated by several brazen political murders, a new romantic opportunity, and a diagnosis that he has Parkinson’s, which has already affected his balance and energy level. Smith’s reveal about what happened to Karina is surprising, logical, and disturbing. Renko, who made his debut in 1981’s Gorky Park, remains the archetype of an honest cop working for a corrupt regime. Agent: Andrew Nurnberg, Andrew Nurnberg Assoc.

May 1, 2023
Moscow police detective Arkady Renko takes on dangerous challenges on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An acquaintance asks Renko to find his adult daughter Karina Abakova, who has "disappeared down a rabbit hole," and Renko says he will search for her for no pay. Karina's interests are music and politics, specifically the anti-government Forum for Democracy. The latter passion seems unwise, as "politics in Russia was for the corrupt, the brave, and the foolish." Then an acquaintance of Renko's is killed before they can meet, and the detective is assigned to find the man's killer. Maybe a connection exists between Karina's disappearance and the murder, which is the first of several. Meanwhile, long-time Renko readers will recall his lover Tatiana Petrovna, who had left him, saying he lacked ambition. And now he's begun to show the classic signs of Parkinson's disease. With Tatiana out of his life and him having an incurable disease, he wonders if life is worth living. Still, he carries on with what becomes two murder cases and a missing person case. One trail leads to Independence Square in Kyiv as Russia appears on the brink of launching an invasion. He crosses paths again with Tatiana, now a New York Times correspondent covering developments in Ukraine. Independence Square plays less of a role in the story than the title might suggest, with plenty of space going to Moscow and Crimea--Renko is a Moscow cop, after all. There are fascinating insights into the Russian character: "No one was better than a Russian at having a superiority complex and an inferiority complex at the same time," and "Beer didn't really count as alcohol in a country where men drank vodka and real men drank brake fluid." (Oh, that can't be true!) And yet there is sympathy, as a character laments the demise of the Soviet Union, saying "We lost everything we had for bubble gum and jeans." Solid sleuthing by Arkady Renko and a good read for his fans.

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