Let me try to remember... Apart from one or two Agatha Christie's books, The Maltese Falcon ages ago, and one of the stories of Nero Wolfe two summers ago, my portfolio of detective novels ends with Martin Cruz Smith's Three Stations... Yes, I think so. I tried once something by Ray Bradbury (requiescat in pace), but desisted. It is not my cup of tea, I guess. However, this Smith's story of Arkady Renko has the power to amaze and gobble up the reader like a huge anaconda: it keeps and leaves him completely dumbfounded almost since the first page.
Renko is probably the only real hero in Moscow: that is, a totally damaged and wronged being, but standing, always standing. Vodka, hangovers, insomnia, loneliness; he is loveless and senseless, without any purpose. The atmosphere of Moscow breathed from the pages of this novel is oppressive and, in the dark of it, Renko is like a spot of diffusive and frail, but persistent light. He is the last link in the evolutionary chain, desperately clung to the dregs of what human beings used to be. Moscow is the palace of evil and inhumanity. It is one of those inhospitable places on the Earth's Inferno. Unbreathable. I can see the white and mythical snow: black and muddy. Trodden. Disposed of. That is Putin's Moscow: a deceitful mica Muscovite trodden and corrupted into a dark piece of biotite, black as jet stone. In such a hell, girls under 15 work as whores after school with the consent of their parents; people shoot people and get shot in return; indomitable dogs tear off somebody's neck skin; educated men pay for sex with kids; boy gangs piss-mark their territory in the Metro underworld; hustlers become mafia; people steal or disposed of three-week babies; mothers attempt to murder along with their sons. In this Moscow, ether fills your lungs.There is no escape. Guys like Renko are miracles, one-in-a-billion chance, even gifted with the power to restore life or fight to death against cold-blooded assassins and win.
At the end of the novel, Renko brings Maya her baby girl. In the eyes of the heartless bitch -fate which is tattooed on her- light leaps on. And one realizes that Renko, the miracle, has created the impossible: hope.
Renko is probably the only real hero in Moscow: that is, a totally damaged and wronged being, but standing, always standing. Vodka, hangovers, insomnia, loneliness; he is loveless and senseless, without any purpose. The atmosphere of Moscow breathed from the pages of this novel is oppressive and, in the dark of it, Renko is like a spot of diffusive and frail, but persistent light. He is the last link in the evolutionary chain, desperately clung to the dregs of what human beings used to be. Moscow is the palace of evil and inhumanity. It is one of those inhospitable places on the Earth's Inferno. Unbreathable. I can see the white and mythical snow: black and muddy. Trodden. Disposed of. That is Putin's Moscow: a deceitful mica Muscovite trodden and corrupted into a dark piece of biotite, black as jet stone. In such a hell, girls under 15 work as whores after school with the consent of their parents; people shoot people and get shot in return; indomitable dogs tear off somebody's neck skin; educated men pay for sex with kids; boy gangs piss-mark their territory in the Metro underworld; hustlers become mafia; people steal or disposed of three-week babies; mothers attempt to murder along with their sons. In this Moscow, ether fills your lungs.There is no escape. Guys like Renko are miracles, one-in-a-billion chance, even gifted with the power to restore life or fight to death against cold-blooded assassins and win.
At the end of the novel, Renko brings Maya her baby girl. In the eyes of the heartless bitch -fate which is tattooed on her- light leaps on. And one realizes that Renko, the miracle, has created the impossible: hope.
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