It happens again and again, it seems to happen to all of the masters of their craft Azimov, LeCarre, Herbert, Penny, and now Martin Cruz Smith. Trading on a brand, without producing a novel worthy of that brand. I highly recommend his earlier works, give these later works a pass. ( )

The Siberian dilemma is if you fall in the water, what should you do? If you climb out you will die within 30 seconds because of the cold and if you stay in the water you will die in 5 minutes because of the cold. What to do? Well, the answer is do something. You will die anyway and the doing may well lead to unseen events that may mean you don't die. So climb out of the water. Well in Arkady Renko's world doing something always leads to unseen events.

In The Siberian Dilemma, Renko goes searching for his girlfriend who is in Siberia following Mikhail Kutsenov around in order to write an article for the newspaper. She has been gone for a month and hasn't returned when she said she would. This desire to visit Siberia is then tainted with work when he has to pick up a prisoner and deliver him to a prison, also in Siberia.

When he gets there, strange goings on at the oilfield, a couple of murders and being shot at all mean that he starts to investigate what is going on. In order to help him out, he meets Bolot who calls himself a factotum, someone who does all kinds of work, to help him out. Things get messy and Bolot who knows how to survive in the cold, who is a shaman and who can get things when he needs them turns out to be essential.

This is book nine in the Arkady Renko series and is a world away from book one which was a gritty, realistic look at life in Moscow with Renko as a flawed detective. Here we have bears, magic and love. It's not quite what the series started out as but I did enjoy it as a break from reading other books. These books are a comfort read for me, easy and quick and I will stay up late at night to finish them! ( )

Good Thriller but Padded with Blank Pages
Review of the Simon & Schuster paperback edition (October 2020) of the Simon & Schuster hardcover original (November 2019)

"Siberian dilemma?" Tatiana asked.
Bolot gestured in Arkady's direction.
"A fisherman is on a frozen lake. He moves around, listening all the time for the ice cracking beneath his feet, ready to jump back to thicker ice if necessary, but sometimes he's not quick enough. The ice breaks. He falls in."
"So, what's the dilemma?"
"I heard it from my wife, Irina. If he pulls himself out of the water onto the ice, he'll freeze to death in seconds, a minute at most. If he stays in the water, he'll die of hypothermia in five." - excerpt from The Siberian Dilemma

To get the lede gripe out of the way first, this book has about 80 blank or non-text pages (adding up full blanks, 1/2 to 9/10th page blanks, pictures, maps, preamble) padding its length from about 200 pages of reading to its full page count of 288. If your veteran author (Cruz Smith, now in his late 70s) doesn't want to expand on the length, or the editor cuts it down, why artificially bump it up?

I followed several of the early books of the Investigator Arkady Renko series after reading the first one, Gorky Park, when it appeared in 1981. Although the settings often varied wide afield from the Moscow beginnings, it did begin to stretch credibility that such an obstinate detective would survive under first the authoritarian Soviet Union, the chaos of its breakup and finally the kleptocracy of Putin. After recently re-reading the 40th Anniversary edition of Gorky Park, I was curious enough to want to read how Renko was managing in the present climate.

Cruz Smith is still excellent in his location research. This latest (2019) investigation sends Renko to the Irkutsk region near Lake Baikal in Siberia. The initiating plot is an apparent assassination attempt on his boss from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, with the Chechen suspect having fled to Siberia. Renko is also concerned that his lover Tatiana, an journalist, has not returned on an agreed date from her investigation of Russian oil oligarchs in the East. Cruz Smith adds an entertaining supporting cast into the mix, especially with a local Irkutsk "factotum" named Rinchin Bolot, of indigenous Buryat background, who attaches himself to Renko.

The twists and betrayals are typical Cruz Smith, but the setting of the Siberian landscape, Lake Baikal, the threats of the freezing cold and wild bears and, of course, the greed of the kleptocracy are all well handled. Like Chekhov's gun, the hinted dilemma of the title is paid off. The obvious inspiration of the real life story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the character of fictional oligarch Mikhail Kuznetsov is obvious of course, even to the extent of both having written a book such as My Fellow Prisoners. The resulting fates are, of course, completely different.

So overall I quite enjoyed it and appreciated its attention to real-life details and inspirations. It was just the artificial page padding of the publisher that was an annoying distraction.

Other Reviews
Review in Asian Review of Books by Peter Gordon, December 13, 2019.

Trivia and Links
[Mild Spoiler] There really is speculation about a Russian Bermuda Triangle in the Irkutsk, Siberia region. ( )

detective ends up in Siberia to find girlfriend. Not a great plot. Silly at times with a strong hint of implausibility. ( )

In a continuing series of misadventures by Arkady Renko, a Moscow investigator, the story takes us to Irkutsk in the Siberian plains. Corruption and political machinations dog Renko's investigation as well as his search for Tatiania, his journalist girlfriend. While the Siberian wilderness is always a background to the narrative, I would guess Martin Cruz Smith has not experienced enough of such a climate or bear hunting and driving on frozen lakes to really convey a genuine feel for the setting.

The author provided a convoluted plot, with some sneaky twists, but largely, Renko is more of a puppet responding to unclear schemes behind his back. The action falls into a series of fits and starts, with interludes that seem disconnected. However, there are enough good pieces to make this worth reading ~ if you've enjoyed other Renko novels. Not up to the standard of Gorky Park or Red Square, for example, but Bolot, the 'factotum', is excellently drawn and brings the best of the story into an enjoyable read. ( )