Polar Star (novel)
First edition
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| Author | Martin Cruz Smith |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Arkady Renko # 2 |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Published | 1989 |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 384pp (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 21957937 |
| LC Class | CPB Box no. 1797 vol. 10 |
| Preceded by | Gorky Park |
| Followed by | Red Square |
Polar Star is a 1989 crime novel by Martin Cruz Smith, set in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. It is a sequel to Gorky Park and features former militsiya investigator Arkady Renko, taking place during the period of Perestroika.
After uncovering corruption in high places (in Gorky Park), Renko is dismissed from his job as a Moscow police investigator and is forced to accept a variety of menial jobs in remote parts of the Soviet Union. Finally, he finds himself gutting fish on a factory ship in the Bering Sea, in part to hide from the KGB, who have tried to kill him. The Soviet factory ship is part of a US-Soviet joint venture, with the US fishing vessels catching the fish and turning the catch over to the Soviets for processing (gutting, cleaning, and freezing). The other crew members have signed up with the prospect of a one-day stop at the United States fisheries port of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, with an extra salary allowance in US$ to let them purchase Western goods such as VCRs and cassette tapes.
Then the body of a murdered female crew member is pulled up in the vessel's nets, and Renko reluctantly agrees to investigate after the ship's political commissar gives him no choice. But Renko's obstinate insistence on learning the truth behind her death, rather than allowing her murder to be covered up as a suicide, results in threats by the commissar to block the visit to the United States, which in turn causes the workers to threaten Renko.
Arkady Renko, former Chief Investigator of the Moscow Town Prosecutor's Office, is serving a self-imposed exile in Siberia to avoid being detained for his actions in Gorky Park several years earlier, despite the Soviet Union's ostensibly increasing liberalization. He procures menial employment as a fish gutter on the "slime line" of a large Arctic Sea factory ship called the Polar Star, part of a joint Soviet-American fishing exercise within detente.
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