Arkady Renko, the moody and brooding hero of GORKY PARK, is back after an absense of eight years. He has not prospered.

We don't envy his circumstances. Forced out of the Moscow hierachy, he exists in the lonely, dirty, twilight of a Soviet factory ship, the Polar Star. He wants only to avoid the limelight, but when murder is done, he can't stay on the sidelines.

In Renko, Martin Cruz Smith has created a character not only vivid and memorable, but believable. He has a stubborn, unheroic streak of individualism that makes us like and identify him. He's like all of us, as we wish we were.