Soon before he died, after a long period of suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Martin Cruz Smith published his final and eleventh mystery starring dogged, brilliant Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, Hotel Ukraine. By now Renko is afflicted with Parkinson’s and in this farewell performance, the brutal hotel room murder of a Russian official sets Renko off on a quixotic, baffling investigation. With his nation having just invaded Ukraine and Putin cracking down on any dissidence, Renko faces obstacles in addition to his illness and the facts of the case, including threats to his journalist wife and his son. Over the years, the author’s plots have grown more epic, in the usual sense of the word (by which I imply, with no real criticism, the plots became less twisty and more confrontational), and his style, never florid, has turned even more spare. The result is a quietly satisfying, fascinating mystery that caps a stellar, forty-four-years-old series.
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