The latest of Smith's thrillers about honest Russian cop Arkady Renko, 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
… read more...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. --Roz KaveneyRead More read less...