Three Stations

An Arkady Renko Novel

By: Martin Cruz Smith

Narrated by: Ron McLarty

Arkady Renko returns in a gripping mystery involving a kidnapped baby with a mysterious teenage mother, a murdered prostitute, police corruption, and as always, the complex, impenetrable landscape of modern-day Moscow.

Investigator Arkady Renko is back on the scene, with a whole new set of problems: his prosecutor keeps him without work, he’s struggling with the onset of middle age, and his friend Victor is arrested for public drunkenness. Zhenya, the fifteen-year-old chess prodigy whom Renko tries to parent, returns to the scene when he witnesses a shocking crime.

As always, Smith’s Three Stations is filled with intriguing, flawed characters and set in Moscow, a city so intricate and three-dimensional it’s practically a character itself.

Good listen but the end felt rushed

While not quite as good as some of the previous Renko books, I was caught up with this one and I enjoyed some of the fresh elements. Zhenya was a pleasant surprise- based on his personality in a previous book I thought he would be an annoying character to follow, but he was sympathetic without changing his fundamental nature. The author also doesn't rely heavily on a love triangle the way he did in many of the books.

Cruz Smith switches expertly between multiple POVs, some of them unexpected, always advancing the plot and never wasting time catching one character up with what the reader already knows. Everything seemed ready to come to a head nicely. Unfortunately the last quarter of the book falters. People return from disgrace with no explanation, key characters are not mentioned for several chapters running. There are also a lot of coincidences and reuse of characters, making Moscow seem a lot smaller than it should.

I still rate it as a good listen, and if you are prepared accept some coincidences and a resolution that felt rushed, there are plenty of good moments and memorable characters. The reader does a good job with it. I'm looking forward to the next one.

another good one

A relatively short but sweet one. not a fan of this particular narrator though. not close to the person reading the first several books in the series.

NOT up to Cruz Smith's standard of writing

Good character development. Lots of suggested linkages in plot segments. Plenty of people to "like" or "dislike". Goodly quantities of merciless, gratuitous gore. Not a bad read until the end. Then, it's as if Cruz took a look at his word processor statistics, discovered that he had written the contractually-required number of words and "finished' the book within the next half an hour. There are WAY too many loose ends and unresolved issues at the end of this book!

Running on Empty

I've read all the Arkady Renko books and am a great fan. So even when MC Smith puts in a pedestrian effort, with minimal character development -- it's still worth a read. But it was also a disappointment given what Smith can do in terms of pulling you into a new setting (Three Stations is still in Moscow, guess I've been spoiled by recent excursions to Havana and Chernobyl). I even had to check to make sure this was an unbridged version because the book seemed to skip over chapters of character, place and plot development. And everything seemed to fall in Arkady's lap. Again, Smith is such a good writer that it's still worth a listen, but next one, please get back up to your usual speed.

Vivid gritty Russia

Great story very vivid humanscape you wonder how the author learned so much about Moscow