Amid the imperialist fervor of late 1941 Tokyo, Harry Niles is a man with a mission -- self-preservation. But Niles was raised by missionary parents and educated in the shadows of Tokyo's underworld -- making his loyalties as dubious as his business dealings.

Now, on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Niles must decide where his true allegiances lie, as he tries to juggle his Japanese mistress and an affair with the wife of a British diplomat; avoid a modern-day samurai who is honor-bound to kill him; and survive the Japanese high command, whose plans for conquest may just dictate his survival.

Set in a maelstrom of personal temptations and mortal enemies, with a remarkable anti-hero caught in a land he can never call his own, DECEMBER 6 is a triumph of imagination, history, and riveting storytelling.

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko's quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.

The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin's. In these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs -- the Red Diggers and Black Diggers -- collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises.

When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries. In this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world–and a reason to relish his own life again.


From the Paperback edition.

Back from exile in the hellish reaches of the Soviet Union, homicide investigator Arkady Renko discovers that his country, his Moscow, even his job, are nearly dead. But his enemies are very much alive, and foremost among them are the powerful black-market crime lords of the Russian mafia. Hounded by this terrifying new underworld, chased by the ruthless minions of the newly rich and powerful, and tempted by his great love, defector Irina Asanova, Arkady can only hope desperately for escape. But fate has something else in store.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

“Extraordinary.”
–Time

“Sharply, evocatively written and elaborately plotted . . . [Red Square] should find as many friends as did Gorky Park.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“Gripping . . . Smith at his best.”
–The Wall Street Journal

“A crackling suspense thriller.”
–The Boston Globe

“Fascinating . . . powerful.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Absorbing.”
–The New York Times

He made too many enemies. He lost his party membership. Once Moscow's top criminal investigator, Arkady Renko now toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship working with American trawlers in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when an adventurous female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Renko is ordered by his captain to investigate an accident that has all the marks of murder. Up against the celebrated Soviet bureaucracy once more, Renko must again become the obsessed, dedicated cop he was in Gorky Park and solve a chilling mystery fraught with international complications.

“Stunning.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“Impossible to put down . . . a book of heart-stopping suspense and intricate plotting, but also a meticulously researched, ambitious literary work of great distinction.”
–The Detroit News

“Martin Cruz Smith writes the most inventive thrillers of anyone in the first rank of thriller writers.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“Gripping . . . absorbing.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer

In Wolves Eat Dogs, beloved detective Arkady Renko enters the privileged world of Russia's new billionaire class. The grandest of them all, a self-made powerhouse named Pasha Ivanov, has apparently leapt to his death from the palatial splendor of his ultra-modern Moscow condominium. While there are no signs pointing to homicide, there is one troubling and puzzling bit of evidence...in Ivanov's bedroom closet, there's a mountain of salt.

Ivanov's demise ultimately leads Renko on a journey through Chernobyl's netherworld. The crimes he uncovers and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia, make for a tense, unforgettable adventure.

“Brilliant . . . enough enigmas within enigmas within enigmas to reel the mind.”
–The New Yorker

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything.

“Once one gets going, one doesn't want to stop. . . . The action is gritty, the plot complicated, [and] the overriding quality is intelligence.”
–The Washington Post

“Reminds you just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be.” –The New York Times Book Review

“An unbelievable achievement . . . vivid, witty . . . completely fascinating.”
–Boston Herald American

“Gripping, romantic, and dazzlingly original.”
–Cosmopolitan

Il cadavere di uno dei padroni della Nuova Russia, disposti a tutto pur di mantenere la loro posizione privilegiata, viene ritrovato dalla polizia ai piedi del suo lussuoso appartamento in uno dei grattacieli di nuova costruzione. Tutto potrebbe far pensare a un suicidio, se non fosse per uno strano particolare: il pavimento del suo guardaroba è ricoperto di sale. Arkady Renko, l'ispettore della polizia criminale di Mosca, già protagonista di "Gorky Park", "Stella polare", "Red Square" e "Havana", indaga e continua a fare domande scomode...

In his groundbreaking Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith created an iconic detective of contemporary fiction. Quietly subversive, brilliantly analytical, and haunted by melancholy, Arkady Renko survived, barely, the journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find his transformed nation just as obsessed with corruption and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship.

In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case: the death of one of Russia's new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion -- closed to the world since 1986's nuclear disaster. It is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko's journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure.

Il nuovo romanzo dell'autore di Gorky Park. Un americano in Giappone alla vigilia di Pearl Harbour. Harry Niles, pur essendo figlio di genitori americani, è nato e cresciuto in Giappone e si è sempre sentito, a tutti gli effetti, cittadino di quel paese. Siamo però nel 1941, l'Europa è già entrata in guerra e presto anche il Giappone, che subisce malvolentieri la politica economica americana, seguirà quella strada. A quel punto Harry, che fino a quel momento è riuscito a fare da ponte tra le due civiltà, dovrà scegliere da che parte stare e la sua non sarà una scelta facile.

The year is 1872. The place is Wigan, England, a coal town where rich mine owners live lavishly alongside miners no better than slaves. Into this dark, complicated world comes Jonathan Blair, who has accepted a commission to find a missing man.

When he begins his search every road leads back to one woman, a haughty, vixenish pit girl named Rose. With her fiery hair and skirts pinned up over trousers, she cares nothing for a society that calls her unnatural, scandalous, erotic.

As Rose and Blair circle one another, first warily, then with the heat of mutual desire, Blair loses his balance. And the lull induced by Rose's sensual touch leaves him unprepared for the bizarre, soul-scorching truth. . . .