From Publishers WeeklySprung from a state psychiatric hospital, Arkady Renko takes refuge in Siberia, ultimately working on a Soviet factory ship in the Bering Sea. When one of his shipmates is murdered, he's pressed into service. "Those eagerly awaiting the return of Renko, the saturnine, chain-smoking police investigator from Moscow who appeared in the bestseller Gorky Park , will be glad to know their hero is back in fine form," said PW. Author tour. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.From the Publisher10 1.5-hour cassettesFrom the Inside FlapArkady Renko has made too many enemies and now he toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when a female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Arkady becomes obsessed with the case and once again discovers more than he wants to know and certainly more than he bargained for....From the Paperback edition. is there an app that reads books to you Polar Star
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Stay on the boat but out of the harbor.By Lou ZitnikIt had been a while since I picked up an Arkady novel, but a few months back I had the jitters for a good historical detective novel, and I found myself searching for a reliable source of pessimism mixed with too much alcohol and a strong taste of desire. Havana Bay was the right price and Martin Cruz Smith has skills, so I tried a dip in Cuban waters. It was okay, but not a trill. More like a chore. Decided to try again with Polar Star. Thought I wouldn't like a story set in claustrophobic trawler but I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be one of Smith's best. Suspenseful plot, tight description, and great atmosphere. Couldn't stop reading.5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. "POLAR STAR" by Martin Cruz Smith is an exciting journeyBy MHVSomewhere in the collective memory, "Gorky Park" has been lurking for decades. If an author is lucky enough to see one of his novels turned into a successful Hollywood movie, he or she is guaranteed a future audience. And quite rightly so in the case of Cruz Smith. "Polar Star" is the first of his novels I have ever read, and for me it is an immediate hit. Here's a writer who goes to great lengths to come up with something good for his hero, Renko Arkady. I learned from an interview with Cruz Smith that after finishing "Gorky Park" (filmed with stars Lee Marvin and William Hurt) he had no plans for a new episode with the same hero. It took him some time before he saw the opportunity to come up with something good. Well, I am glad he took his time, because it is well worth it. This is the kind of crime novel that stands way above average because there's more than a corpse coming out of the Bering Sea here; there's the life journey of the hero of the series (this is only the second book about Renko Arkady, lots more have followed, with intriguing titles like "Stalin's Ghost") who comes from a police position in Moskow and is now a worker on a huge Soviet fishing ship. All the nitty gritty stuff of the life aboard this floating factory and worker's hotel comes to life: both the technicial and the political details. Life on this ship, the Polar Star, in the icy Bering Sea and around the Aleut islands (a sort of hair in the ocean coming off Alaska), is unbelievably rough. The talent of Martin Cruz Smith in this novel, for me, is that he: brought all this to life, came up with some of the most chilling suspense in writing I have come across in years (some really nasty, frosty stuff), and added some real life goings on about the people on board, how they danced in the evening simply to remember how to dance, and how sturdy Soviet women can still move these numbed men in that arctic climate (no irrelevant romantic involvement here, but something real and heartwarming). I was thrilled and moved. See what you think.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Nearly 3 Decades Later, Polar Star Still a Solid ReadBy Martin Roy Hill, AuthorPolar Star by Martin Cruz Smith My rating: 4 of 5 stars I originally read Martin Cruz Smith's Polar Star when it first came out in 1989, having already read his first Arkady Renko book, Gorky Park. I remembered it as a fine read, with the type of sardonic protagonist I enjoy. I decided to read it again because one of my current works in progress is set above the Arctic Circle, and I wanted to see how Smith handled the Arctic as a location. Having just completed Polar Star again, I determined it is still a fine read, with the type of sardonic protagonist I enjoy.At the end of Gorky Park, Renko lost his job as a Moscow police investigator. After escaping the clutches of the KBG, he spent the ensuing years in a variety of menial jobs, keeping a low profile, until he ends up gutting fish on the "slime line" of the Polar Star, a Soviet factory ship. The USSR is going through its period of Perestroika, or restructuring. The Polar Star is part of a joint Soviet-U.S. venture in which American trawlers catch the fish and the Polar Star processes them.The body of Zina, a young, female Polar Star crew member, is hauled aboard the Soviet ship in a fish net. Knowing Renko's past employment as an investigator, the Polar Star's captain, Marchuck, orders the fish gutter to determine Zina's cause of death. Was it an accident or suicide? Renko reluctantly agrees, despite knowing Zina's body shows obvious signs of murder, the one cause of death no one wants to consider.Renko's search for suspects is complicated by the fact the beautiful Zina has slept with nearly every man aboard the Polar Star, including Marchuk. More complications arise when one of the suspects, a fisherman named Karp, is a vengeful former convict put in prison years before by Renko. When Renko's search for facts leads him to the bowels of the ship, he discovers secrets about the Polar Star he was never meant to know.Smith's Renko books remind me in many ways of Phillip Kerr's Bernie Gunther books. Like Gunther, Renko grows weary as he watches history--in this case, the collapse of the Soviet Union--unfold through the lens of his investigative efforts. Smith does an excellent job of creating the environment of a factory ship at sea, the result of doing extensive on-scene research aboard a real factory ship. His characters are as realistic and tough as the ship itself. Re-reading Polar Star made me regret not having continued with the subsequent books in the Renko series, a mistake I do not intend to make again.