History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 8/10

• Plot: Three bodies, faces and fingertips removed, are found under the snow in a Moscow park, and the case leads from the KGB to an American fur dealer.
• Clues: Superb forensic detail, including a reconstructed face and the trade in sables.
• Reveal: Satisfying, though the final act in New York loosens the grip.
• Science bonus: A forensic anthropologist rebuilds a victim’s face from the skull, modelled on the real Soviet pioneer of the technique, and fur-trade biology helps trace the smuggling.

Arkady Renko is chief homicide investigator for the Moscow militia. When three bodies are found frozen in Gorky Park, their faces cut off and their fingertips removed, he suspects the case will be taken from him by the KGB. It isn’t, which is worse. Renko follows the investigation into a world of black-market trade, political pressure and an American businessman with friends in high places.

Martin Cruz Smith had never been to the Soviet Union for long, but his Moscow feels real: grey, cold, bureaucratic and full of small corruptions. Renko is a memorable hero, a decent man who believes in doing his job properly in a system that punishes decency.

The investigation is excellent. A forensic anthropologist reconstructs a victim’s face, and the trail through sable smuggling is both exotic and credible. Renko’s romance with Irina Asanova, a young woman with dissident sympathies, gives the book emotional intensity.

The last section, which moves to New York, is less convincing, and the violence becomes more conventional thriller material. Some characters, especially the Americans, are thin.

The 8 reflects a gripping and original novel that showed how a crime story could illuminate a whole society. It launched a long series, and the 1983 film starred William Hurt.