Another great book I happened on!

I had read Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith years ago and had really enjoyed it as well the informative way he wrote describing life in Moscow.

That book was nominated by Time  magazine as "the thriller of the 80's" and became a film.He wrote a sequel, Polar Star which I have not read but will.

His subsequent writing, Red Square, HarperCollins, 1992, London, picks up with our hero, Special Investigator Arkady Renko in August 1991 as the old Soviet Union is struggling to achieve some form of democracy & the Baltic States are making moves to attain the same. His extremely tough & deprived life in Moscow is described through the story (for instance he has 2 police cars so that he has one to use & the other is for parts, and the lack of plentiful food) & when he has to travel to Berlin, after the wall is down, he is almost overwhelmed due to the contrast in the culture. Couple that with his very risky mission looking for a murderer and the chance that he could "just disappear" at the hands of his enemies,which includes some of his superiors,and it is hard to put the book down.

Mr. Smith also wrote Stallion Gate, Nightwing, Canto for a Gypsy and Gypsy in Amber which I will look for. Great read.