It was probably a mistake to read Stalin’s Ghost directly after Wolves Eat Dogs. Once again, we are in the ‘new’ Russia, but with the menacing shadow of the possibly resurrected Stalin looming over the metro he had built by slave labour. Cruz Smith is far to realistic a writer to actually bring Stalin back to life, and the Stalin sightings are actually a hook to hang a very different mystery on. (If you do want Stalin nostalgia then try Robert Harris’s Archangel.)
There’s a disturbing trend for people accused of serious crimes standing for parliament in Russia because Russian MPs have immunity from prosecution (see Anna Politovskaya’s brilliant A Russian Diary for more on that). Here, a veteran of Chechnya first becomes a policeman, and then launches a political career in the remote city of Tver to cover up some dark secrets.
There are other themes here – the most powerful of which is the discovery and attempted political exploitation of a mass grave. There is breathtaking cynicism in Chechnya. But the novel doesn’t work on several levels. The personal relationships no longer make sense – Renko’s girlfriend (who he met in already strange circumstances in the previous book) is conveniently connected to the major character in this new book. Renko gets shot in the head in a plot line that is at best only a tangent.
Wolves Eat Dogs was a far better book; Stalin’s Ghost is the weakest of the Renko series so far.
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