Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() A docking by the Polar Star at the American base of Dutch Harbor brings a second attempt and reveals a mortal enemy-Karp Korobetz, a hard-core criminal whom Arkady arrested for murder years before in Moscow and who now locks Arkady into a burning cabin. Troubles crowd in at once: pressure from the Ship's political officer to declare the murder an accident or suicide resentment by crews both Yank and Russian of Arkady's bulldogged questioning a scary attempt by unknown assasilants on Arkady's life by locking him into a deep-freezer. When the stabbed body of female crew member Zina Patiashvili surfaces with the fishing nets, the ship's captain asks reluctant Arkady to investigate. Tossed into a psychiatric ward for the "political unreliability" he evinced in Gorky Park, Arkady has escaped to Siberia and is now toiling on the "slime line" of a giant floating food-processing plant, part of a joint Soviet-US venture in the Bering Strait. A Gorky Park sequel that finds Arkady Renko, disgraced Moscow cop-hero of that 1981 best seller, hiding out on a Russian factory ship (the Polar Star)-and up to his dour ears in an intricately textured but slow-drifting mess of murder, drug smuggling, and political intrigue. ![]()
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