Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith

This chess-inspired 8th outing of the cranky melancholy police investigator, Arkady Renko, is a fast-paced romp through the underbelly of corrupt police/politicians/media in Putin’s crumbling modern Russia. Where just about everyone has an agenda hustling from the streets to the highest office, for everything from stolen goods to billion ruble contracts. And where Cruz Smith’s cast of well-drawn characters are all doing their best trying to avoid being collateral damage amid the warring factions. I enjoyed the pace, which is fairly brisk and doesn’t lag, because a lot of the action is split between a number of the characters, not just our world-weary investigator. While Renko is essentially trying to discover who killed investigative reporter, Tatiana Petrovna, and more importantly, why, he connects her murder to that of recently assassinated mafia kingpin, Grisha Grigorenko. And, as he pieces together snippets of information, he stumbles upon a much larger picture than just revenge,…