Red Square

Red Square    

                                  by Martin Cruz Smith

Red Square is a  mystery, set in Russia in the year 1991. It is a sequel to Gorky Park and Polar Star and features the Investigator Arkady Renko, taking place during the period of the collapse of the Soviet Union.[

As the existing social and economic structure of the Soviet Union breaks down, Arkady Renko has been reinstated as an Investigator in the police force. He is trying to clear up a nest of illicit traders when his chief informant dies in a horrific fireball. At the late informer's flat, his fax machine keeps asking the apparently meaningless question, "Where is Red Square?"

The question does not pertain to a location, but to a painting by Malevich, which has resurfaced on the black market after being lost since WWII. Martin Cruz Smith has created a remarkable character in his redoubtable Russian policeman Arkady Renko, the protagonist of GORKY PARK and POLAR STAR. The rejected son of a famous Russian military officer who became a brutal wartime hero of the Communist Party, Renko is a brilliant investigator with a skeptical and independent point of view. Having earlier sacrificed himself for his dissident lover, Irina Asanova, suffering imprisonment and exile for helping her escape, he returns to Moscow on the brink of political and social dissolution. It appears that corrupt officials and black marketers run the country while organized crime has replaced the Party as the controlling force in Russian society.

Smith brings all of these elements together in this story, which covers two weeks in August 1991, a time leading up to the attempted coup of August 21.  There is an informative back story describing the history of the Chechens and their relationship with Russia. The suicide of Renko’s father brings a personal note to the story. The murder trail leads both to the Russian mafia and to criminal connections in Munich. Renko has been listening to Radio Liberty on a borrowed radio and has heard Irina’s voice. When circumstances seem to fit he gets himself to Munich and finds Irina. Renko finds that his perceived duty to his homeland conflicts with his personal desires, that by solving the case (which has now cost the life of a fellow investigator) he may again lose Irina.

Although the plot of this detective novel is carefully and complexly constructed, Smith’s primary interest is in the character development of his subtle protagonist. Renko is a tormented hero, a man of conscience. Revenge for the death of his informant and for other deaths sit quietly on his mind as well. Smith’s portrayal of Renko’s navigation through a collapsing world is compelling and draws one into the empty stores of Moscow, the endless lines, and into the lives of the suffering Muscovites .


The biggest mystery to me is why this painting of which there are apparently two versions is worth five million dollars. Who can say what it is supposedly  valued at today.