If you had asked me in 1981 as I was enjoying Martin Cruz Smith’s GORKY PARK if I would still be reading stories featuring his hero, Arkady Renko, in 2023, I would have doubted it. Thankfully, I would have been very wrong. I was introduced to Smith in 1977 with his horror novel, NIGHTWING, which was later made into a forgettable movie.

INDEPENDENCE SQUARE is the 10th entry in this series and the first since 2019. I confess that I still draw a mental image of William Hurt whenever I envision Arkady Renko. Hurt was an unlikely choice to play the Russian detective but did a stellar job in the 1983 film version of GORKY PARK.

"INDEPENDENCE SQUARE drips with intrigue, suspense and political furor during a very heated moment in Russian history that could lead to a much larger war on a global scale."

At the start of this latest novel, Arkady works as an investigator with Moscow’s Office of Prosecution and has been relegated to a desk job at the behest of Prosecutor Zurin. Zurin had been responsible for sending Arkady on numerous adventures and assigning him difficult cases over the years, and he is hopeful that he will have that opportunity again.

This is a different Arkady Renko from what readers have seen in the past. He is a bit distant and listless for a number of reasons. His relationship with his longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, ended when she chose her work as an investigative reporter over their partnership. We also will learn that he has been keeping a diagnosis of what appears to be early onset Parkinson’s a secret, even though his balance and mobility issues soon will be noticed by anyone paying attention.

Meanwhile, Arkady is approached by a friend, Fyodor Abakov, who everyone calls “Bronson” due to his likeness to actor Charles Bronson. Bronson needs Renko’s assistance in finding his daughter, Karina, who has gone missing. She is a violinist who may have gotten mixed up with some bad people. Arkady is Bronson’s last-ditch effort at locating her --- with the understanding that he do this on his own and keep the police out of it.

Arkady, of course, accepts this challenge as he is eager to do something of value again. He learns that Karina is an anti-Putin activist, which puts her on the wrong side of many in the area. He travels to Ukraine where Karina lives and meets her roommate, Elena. With all the recent developments in Arkady’s personal life, he easily falls for the attractive and stimulating Elena, even though he realizes it may cloud his judgment on this assignment. Smith cleverly sets the book’s action just prior to Putin’s war against Ukraine, which makes the ice that Arkady is skating on especially thin and precarious.

The search for Karina leads Arkady to Kyiv and that much closer to the conflagration that is about to start there. Later, in Crimea, he meets up with Tatiana. Not only does this complicate his burgeoning relationship with Elena, it puts both women in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people who not only are behind Karina’s disappearance but are ready to act against Arkady as well.

INDEPENDENCE SQUARE drips with intrigue, suspense and political furor during a very heated moment in Russian history that could lead to a much larger war on a global scale. What makes Arkady’s fight with Parkinson’s particularly relevant is that it mirrors the same health battle that Martin Cruz Smith has been going through. He is able to use his beloved protagonist in a symbolic way to deal with this disease while sharing the pain that comes with it. Knowing all of this makes reading the book that much more poignant.