Hotel Ukraine is the eleventh and, sadly, final novel in the Arkady Renko series that started way back in 1981 with Gorky Park. In that time Smith, through Renko, has charted the fall of the Soviet Union, events like Chernobyl, the rise of Putin and even more recently the invasion of Ukraine. Renko the dogged, hard boiled, incorruptible detective has somehow survived all of this change and Parkinsons disease, a condition he shared with his author but hid from his colleagues,.
When Hotel Ukraine opens, the invasion of Ukraine has just begun and ordinary Russians are in the street protesting. Renko and his partner are called to investigate the murder of a deputy minister in a hotel room of the famous Hotel Ukraine. They are soon joined by the FSB in the form of Renko’s former lover Marina. Marina wants this all to go away but Renko knows there is more to the story, a hunch that gets him in hot water (of course) then takes him to the front line in Ukraine and back again.
Smith once again has his finger on the pulse of Russian society and politics. In this case he particularly digs into the role of mercenaries used by Russia in the early days of the war. He has a character who is very much a stand in for Yevgeny Prigozhin who runs a mercenary outfit that is very similar to the Wagner Group. Renko is, as always, the channel for Smith’s pithy observations:
Arkady knew that Russian politics were more vicious and toxic than most foreign intelligence services. Alliances were always shifting. The smart people, the survivors, were the ones who knew not just where the solid ground was but where it would be in the future too. Money gave access to power; power gave access to money.
In Hotel Ukraine Renko is once again at his noir, hard boiled, wryly pessimistic best. He is also ably assisted by his circle of friends and colleagues including adopted son Zhenya, lover and journalist Tatiana and partner Victor.
Arkady Renko and his exploits have been a staple of the crime scene for over 40 years. Across this series Smith not only delivered great mysteries but he used these to give readers a peak behind the iron curtain and understand aspects of Russian culture and politics from the ground. This will definitely be the last Renko outing – Smith died just as Hotel Ukraine book was being published. But Smith leaves behind an amazing body of work in which he used genre to inform, entertain and enthral but also to do so much more than just tell a great story
Hotel Ukraine by Martin Cruz Smith
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