Polar Star

Set in Soviet Russia in the 1980s during the period known as Perestroika, American author Martin Cruz Smith’s crime novel Polar Star (1989) chronicles the efforts of ex-police investigator Arkady Renko to solve the murder of a young woman working on a fish processing vessel in the Bering Sea. Polar Star is the sequel to the 1981 novel Gorky Park and the second of nine novels by Smith to feature Arkady as a protagonist, as of 2020.

The son of Red Army General Kiril Renko, Arkady is born into the nomenklatura, the de facto elite class of the Soviet Union whose members fill most administrative positions within the Communist Party's vast bureaucracy. In the eyes of his father, Kiril—a remorseless Stalinist nicknamed "the Butcher" for his brutality—Arkady is a failure for having chosen a relatively humble career as a police officer when he could have easily risen through the ranks of the military or the Communist bureaucracy with ease, thanks to his name and status. Arkady is also haunted by the unwitting role he played in the suicide of his mother, who killed herself by walking into a lake while weighed down with rocks collected by her son.

As a member of the Soviet militsiya police force, Arkady becomes one of its chief investigators in Moscow. Despite his own status as a member of the nomenklatura, Arkady commits to exposing criminality within the Soviet elite, at great personal and professional risk. After the events of Gorky Park, during which Arkady exposes a corrupt and murderous conspiracy implicating a number of high-ranking Communist Party members, he is dismissed from the militsiya. Arkady briefly considers defecting to the United States before concluding that American capitalism is equally corrupt.



Barred from the privileges he once received as a member of the nomenklatura and worried about violent reprisals from the KGB, Arkady wanders the Soviet Union performing menial jobs in remote areas to survive. He eventually ends up in the Bering Sea on a fish processing vessel called the Polar Star, gutting fish for a living. Despite the ongoing tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Polar Star works with American vessels as part of a tentative Soviet effort during the Perestroika era to engage economically with the US. Many of Arkady's fellow workers join the crew simply because the ship is scheduled for a one-day stop at Dutch Harbor in Alaska, where American goods like VCRs and cassette tapes can be purchased more easily and cheaply than in the Soviet Union.

One day, Zina Patiashvili, a young female crewmate is found dead in one of the vessel's nets surrounded by freshly caught fish. After being made aware of Arkady's past work as an investigator, the ship's captain, Viktor Marchuk enlists his help in determining how Zina died. The death becomes a point of great interest for many on board, including the ship's American representative Susan Hightower, a shady Communist Party commissar named Volovoi, and the ship's best fisher Karp Korobetz. While many view Arkady's work with suspicion, he appears to find an ally in Hess, the ship's chief electrical engineer and a spy secretly working on behalf of the Americans. As Arkady researches Zina's past, he learns that she is known for having many lovers, including Captain Marchuk. While Arkady is eager to flex his investigative skills, he is also deeply frustrated by the obstructive efforts of his shipmates who fear that a prolonged investigation will delay or eliminate the opportunity to spend time in Dutch Harbor. With few leads and increasing pressure from all sides, Arkady reluctantly confirms the original theory that Zina's death is a suicide.

While on the much-awaited shore leave in Dutch Harbor with the rest of the crew, Arkady and Susan enter into a sexual relationship. Upon seeing Arkady leave Susan's dwelling, Volovoi threatens to kill Arkady. Karp interrupts the escalating conflict by killing Volovoi himself, locking Arkady in an abandoned building, and setting the building on fire. Arkady narrowly escapes, but without proof and in fear of future reprisals, he is reluctant to report Karp to the authorities. The crew returns to the Polar Star after a day of shore leave, and the ship travels north, trailed by an American trawler.



Although Arkady is loath to report Karp, he does his own independent investigation of the man, hoping to learn why Karp tried to kill him. Arkady learns that Karp and Zina were romantically involved but that Zina also carried on a relationship with an American abroad the US trawler who planned to help her defect. Arkady also learns of Hess' espionage activities and the secret cables he operates connecting the two vessels.

As the ships move farther north, the vessels become trapped in ice. Hoping to learn more about Zina's American lover, Arkady traverses the ice to board the American trawler. He is followed by Karp, who wants to help find Zina's killer. While aboard, they discover that Zina was killed on the American ship, and her body was later transported to the Soviet fishing nets. Karp finds and kills Zina's murderer, the American lover who promised to help her defect. Arkady and Karp escape the American ship. Facing a brutal Soviet sentence for killing an American, Karp opts to commit suicide by jumping into the icy water. Arkady—having solved the murder while also exposing acts of espionage against the Soviet Union—finds himself once again in the Communist Party's good graces.

Polar Star deftly uses the mystery genre to expose very real corruption and hypocrisy during the Soviet era of Perestroika.