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    Wolves Eat Dogs
    Wolves Eat Dogs
    Wolves Eat Dogs
    Audiobook11 hours

    Wolves Eat Dogs

    Written by Martin Cruz Smith

    Narrated by Henry Strozier

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A Moscow detective is sent to Chernobyl for a frightening case in the most spectacular entry yet in Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series.

    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 yet: 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJan 4, 2011
    ISBN9781442342583
    Author

    Martin Cruz Smith

    Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include Gorky Park, Stallion Gate, Nightwing, Polar Star, Stalin’s Ghost, Rose, December 6, Tatiana, The Girl from Venice, and The Siberian Dilemma. He is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award and Britain’s Golden Dagger Award, and a winner of the Premio Piemonte Giallo Internazionale. He lives in California.

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    Reviews for Wolves Eat Dogs

    3.5/5

    357 ratings23 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is my favorite of all the Arkady Reno novels. At once deeply macabre and mysteriously redemptive. An imaginative masterpiece that reveals a treasure of horrendous truths and healing grace.
    • 5/5
      I read this Book years ago but it was such a pleasure to listen to the audiobook.
      Thrilling, documented, and very interesting in 2023?
    • 4/5
      Typically excellent Renko.
    • 4/5
      Cynical, melancholy Moscow special investigator Arkardy Renko has a serious problem. One of Moscow's newly minted billionaires has taken a fatal plunge off of a twenty-story condominium - suicide or murder? As Renko dryly observes "We prefer suicides. Suicides don't demand work, or drive up the crime rate."In his fifth book featuring his laconic, down-trodden detective, Martin Cruz Smith is at the top of his game. Wolves Eat Dogs takes Renko, filling his role as Moscow's most dogged and quixotic gumshoe, from the heady environs of the new Russian elite down a twisted, wayward path into a deadly quietly radioactive heart of darkness, the 30-mile Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl. Tautly written, intriguing and quite frankly offering a more humane glimpse of the Russian pysche then western fiction typically offers, Wolves Eat Dogs is a terrific and unique mystery, with Renko, as ever, leading the reader deeper and deeper into uncharted territory - in this case, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, with its eerie abandoned towns, burgeoning wildlife, icon-thieves, corrupt car parts dealers and obsessive scientests. Smith weaves an involving and immersive mystery with first-rate characters and plotting, in a very unique setting.
    • 4/5
      Wonderfully fantastic. As always full, rich characters set in the most extraordinary place!
    • 4/5
      I just really love Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko spy thrillers. I like his other books too, but there's just something about these... I was really sad that after I read this book, there'd be no more that I hadn't read... and then I went online, and there's a new one out due next month! Yay! "Stalin's Ghost" is now on my wishlist...

      In "Wolves Eat Dogs," the fifth in the series, investigator Renko is at the scene of the death of a prominent Russian businessman, who appears to have leaped out his window to his death - an obvious suicide. However, Renko has a hunch there's something more to this death - a feeling that's not looked kindly upon by either his superiors or the dead man's associates, who feel that any hint of a potential crime would tarnish Russian business' already-not-too-shining reputation.
      Nevertheless, Renko stays doggedly on the case, and soon his persistence takes him to the wastelands of Chernobyl....
      The crime (of course there's a crime!) is almost presciently relevant in today's political scene, and Cruz Smith really effectively not only does his research but uses it - I fully believed in the place and characters. I recently read a National Geographic article about the current state of the lands around Chernobyl, so I know that much of what Cruz Smith writes is accurate - but after reading his book, I feel that not only do I know, I understand.
      Plus, the book was exciting and fun!
    • 4/5
      A great finish and end ... but very hard to follow in between. A high profile mobster commits suicide (at least everyone thinks so) but Arkady needs better proof and the Whys answered. He spends most of the novel in the danger zone of Chernobyl, Ukraine, trying to find answers. This is actually the most interesting part to me; what life is like in a radioactive zone. Language a little rough for my tastes and the overall feeling more dark than his usual stuff, I still like MCS a lot.
    • 4/5
      When the wealthy physicist plunges to his death from his penthouse window Investigator Akardy Renko suspects foul play but without enough evidence the case is determined as suicide. A short time after another body is discovered in the restricted zone surrounding Chernobyl and it appears the two deaths are related. Renko is dispatched to the area to do some investigating and manages to find himself plenty of trouble.Renko is a likeable , somewhat flawed character, seemingly unable to make smart decisions, who somehow makes it all right in the end
    • 5/5
      This is the fifth in Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series, and it's outstandingly good - a return to the form of the first in the series, the famous "Gorky Park".Renko is the classic god cop in a bad place: dogged, incorruptible and determined on uncovering the truth whatever the cost to himself. What lifts this book to heights the previous few entries in the series haven't matched in that much of it is set in the Zone of Exclusion around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Smith does a great job of describing the eerie setting, teeming with wildlife but also home to scientific research teams and fugitive humans.While it's not enormously hard, once the Chernobyl section of the book gets underway, to work out whodunnit, that really doesn't matter in this case - and how Renko saves his skin (or rather has it saved for him) provides the twist I didn't see coming. A tremendously good read even if you are not especially fond of thrillers.
    • 3/5
      Thoroughly average. And I mean that as a compliment, kind of. Renko is your token 'figures everything out by the end' detective, and is here taken on a winding adventure to figure some things out before the book ends. The highlight is Chernobyl and the setting in a gloomy radioactive world. Not an area that is typically written about, but certainly worth further exploration as it is a very interesting backdrop here. Otherwise, pretty by the numbers.
    • 4/5
      Wolves eat Dogs is another Arkady Renko thriller (of Gorky Park fame)Arkady Renko is one of those typical lonely, incorruptible and troubled investigators who go on against all odds, with complete disregard for personal safety and relationships. Why he acts as he does remains unclear - there is almost no introspection in these thrillers.But the story is interesting enough, and the setting - modern post-communism Russia with its own maffia and millionaires (often the same thing) too. A very rich physicist jumps out of the 10th floor window of a very secure building - or was he pushed? There is a mountain of salt in his bedroom cupboard - why? The story takes Arkady all the way to Chernobyl - and we get haunting descriptions of life there.A very good read for lovers of the genre.
    • 5/5
      one of his best
    • 4/5
      I was glad to follow along once again with my sturdy investigator Arkady Renko, and to be able to return for a Russian history lesson. I thought this was a complex story that I had to read carefully, but Martin Cruz Smith ensured that all the parts were pulled together to make for an exciting read. I wouldn't rate Wolves as one of Mr. Smith's best novels, but it still was a fantastic read. Highly recommend to all Martin Cruz Smith fans.
    • 2/5
      too slow but still like the arkady character
    • 4/5
      I surprised myself by being really engaged in it. I don’t usually read detective stories or thrillers, but the setting really sucked me in into this one. A big part of the story is set in contemporary Chernobyl- the site of the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster, or more precisely in the Zone of Exclusion, which is bigger than Chernobyl itself, mainly abandoned and guarded by militia. Due to still exorbitantly high radiation levels the place is inhabited only by a handful of scientists, crooks and a couple of old people living there illegally. The site itself reminds me of Picnic by the Roadside, a sci-fi book by Borys and Arkadij Strugatsky, and Stalker – the Russian movie from the 70s based on it. The book and the movie are about a site aliens left on Earth as they just stopped by without showing any interest in humanity or any desire for interaction with it. Weird, haunting and dangerous, permeated with strange and sometimes deadly properties, it’s just like Chernobyl nowadays, and immediately coming to mind as an analogy. Interesting, though, that since the human activity practically ceased in Chernobyl, animals are thriving- big packs of wolves, wild boars, deer, moose and some bison roam the land. Fish grow to gigantic dimensions and populate what was once the plant’s cooling pond, and strange birds- like white swallows- sing. A unique experiment is underway. Anyway, I found it very interesting in this respect, and I liked the main character to boot, so it was good reading.
    • 5/5
      For me the crime mystery, although it obviously drove the plot forward, was less important than the stories of the main characters. The Chernobyl setting was an extraordinary one, for me this is an example of a novel which gives a better account of a situation than a straight factual one, given that the acknowledgements suggest it was well researched (and there had been an account recently in the Independent of how the local wildlife are thriving there, coping better with radiation than with human society.). It also gives a fascinating account of modern Russia. Its moral dimension adds depth and interest. The writing is crisp, ironic and atmospheric. A really good read.
    • 5/5
      Martin Cruz Smith's ability to evoke strange and exotic locales (as in Polar Star, Havana Bay, December 6th) is shown to good effect in this novel that takes place in and around the nuclear wasteland that was created when the reactor at the Chernobyl power plant blew up. The plot involves the sardonic investigator, Arkady Renko, investigating what appears to be a suicide, and no one thinks otherwise, except for Renko. The investigation takes Renko to the burnt out areas in the Ukraine that has become a home to an odd collection of characters who seem to thrive in the hot zone surrounding the entombed power plant.
    • 3/5
      I figured out the killer about half-way through and the motive about 50 pages later, but I liked the discriptions of the Zone of Exclusion around Chernobyl and I find the character of Arkady Renko attractive. I'll probably read "Stalin's Ghost" when it comes out in paper.
    • 3/5
      Weakest of the Arkady Renko novel's I've read. Renko ends up at Chernobyl investigating the death of one of Russia's oligarchs. Interesting look at the no man's land of the power plant disaster, but the plot of the novel seemed a bit weak
    • 4/5
      Smith's thrillers about honest Russian cop Arkady Renko, inc Gorky Park, are excellent reads. Those looking for a simple thriller or a puzzling who-dunnit may be disappointed. This is a book about a strange and alien landscape and a wonderful excursion for Renko, with lovely little highlights and sidebars, including the wonderfully impassive child chess player and the bitter, damaged Doctor Eva.Read it, leave aside expectations of standard thrillers and you'll enjoy this well written book.Wolves Eat Dogs has a memorably spooky opening as Renko prowls the apartment of one of the men who has done well out of privatization and neo-capitalism and has suddenly jumped out of a tenth floor window. The dead man's cupboard is full of salt and he was clutching a salt-shaker when he died--no-one wants to investigate madness, but Renko suspects that there is more to it than that. When the dead man's partner turns up with his throat cut in a cemetery in the Ukraine, his bosses get him out of their hair by sending him to investigate--in the overgrown deserted towns and returning woodlands around the radioactive ruins of the Chernobyl power plant. A place full of deadly legacies and ruined hopes is just the sort of place where Renko feels at home, and where secrets are as common as giant mutant catfish. The mystery is less impressive here than the atmosphere--Smith gives the attentive reader more clues than merely playing fair demands--but with atmosphere so intense that hardly matters.
    • 5/5
      This unusual crime thriller is set around Chernobyl and Moscow, having at its heart those responsible for the nuclear reactor explosion and disastrous aftermath. The hero is Renko, familar to those who have read Gorky Park and other Cruz-Smith novels. I was reading it at the time of Litvinenko's mysterious death in London from Polonium poisoning, which seems to have occurred only a few metres from my office in Grosvenor Square. This added to my interest as there are definite parallels between the two plots, both appearing equally far-fetched, but then again...Martin Cruz-Smith seems to evoke a very strong sense of time and place, clearly the result of long and detailed research. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I first encountered Arkady Renko (the hero) in Gorky Park. I have read a few of the other Renko novels. This new story is tautly plotted. Smith uses a spare style that wastes no words, yet draws the reader into the story. How does he seem to know Russia and the Ukraine so well. As this is the 20 year anniversary of Chernobyl, the story is even more appropriate.
    • 5/5
      Interesting descriptions of living around present-day Chernobyl nuclear reactor.