Wolves Eat Dogs

With Arkady Renko, Martin Cruz Smith created one of the iconic sleuths of contemporary fiction. Renko's cynicism, his profound love of the truth coupled with his passionate hatred for the hypocrisy that was once the Soviet Union, have won over millions of readers around the world. Now, Renko returns with a case that epitomizes the New Russia.

Pal Ivanov, powerful, vigorous, dangerous, and one of the nation's billionaire businessmen, has jumped to his death. When Renko is called in to investigate, he uncovers hidden demons and byzantine international plots that drove this oligarch to his death. The trail leads to The Zone: the area surrounding Chernobyl, site of the Earth's worst nuclear reactor accident eighteen years ago. It is a ghostly world, still glowing, inhabited by Russian militia, hearty elderly Ukrainians who refuse to relocate, and shady entrepreneurs who seem to have figured out ways to make a few rubles on the radioactive graves of so many. Renko's journey to this netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there and the secrets they reveal about his nation, make for a tense, unforgettable page-turning adventure.

Filled with the detail and color that make each of Martin Cruz Smith's novels a ticket to an unknown world, Wolves Eat Dogs is Renko's most harrowing trip.

"Martin Cruz Smith is the master of the international thriller." The New York Times

"Martin Cruz Smith and Detective Arkady Renko are irresistible." Time

"An engrossing mystery with a satisfyingly slam-bang conclusion." The Boston Herald

"Smith's latest is filled with the same eye for detail and fully developed characters that made Gorky Park so compelling." Library Journal

"As always, Smith...imagines a Russia that is sad, broken, and, somehow, romantically irresistible." Kirkus Reviews

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: 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.

Martin Cruz Smith first burst onto the literary landscape with his critically acclaimed Gorky Park, which went on to become an international bestseller. His subsequent novels include Polar Star, Red Square, Havana Bay, and Rose, of which the latter two won the Hammett Award. He lives with his family in California.