The PKSCA Book Club’s first Zoom meeting of 2026 will be on January 29th for a discussion of Hotel Ukraine, Martin Cruz Smith’s 11th murder mystery novel featuring the brilliant, beleaguered Moscow homicide detective Arkady Renko—a lovable character with a sarcastic wit and a principled sense of duty & decency that continually put him at odds with corrupt Powers That Be—from his superior at the police department to mafia leaders to high government officials (Putin included).
Upon my reading of the first Renko novel—Gorky Park in the early 80s—I was thoroughly hooked on Martin Cruz Smith and ended up reading all of his published works. Naturally, then, when he came to Portland’s Powell’s Book Store in the early 90s to promote his latest Renko novel, Tatiana, I was there to purchase a signed copy. (Tatiana, Arkady’s intrepid investigative reporter girlfriend, is a prominent player in a number of Smith’s Renko novels, including Hotel Ukraine.) The event began with a shocking admission from Smith: He had been diagnosed with early Parkinson’s. Nonetheless, over the next three decades he managed to continue writing novels, most of them with Renko as protagonist, the final two of which (Independence Square and Hotel Ukraine) find Arcady not only battling the bad guys, but Parkinson’s as well. At the end of Hotel Ukraine, Smith’s opening paragraph of “Acknowledgements” reads as follows:
“It is surprising to think that I have had Parkinson’s for almost thirty years. For most of that time I have been remarkably well. But this disease takes no prisoners, and now I have finished my last book. There is only one Arkady, and I will miss him.”
Martin Cruz Smith died last July, just days after the publishing of Hotel Ukraine…and I will miss him.
Visit the PKSCA Book Club page for more, including a Zoom Link to the meeting and Discussion Questions prepared by our moderator Alan Ellis.