Books Read in April 2026

Basically in April I read four mystery novels and one graphic novel. So, not a lot of variety. But I enjoyed all the books, and that is what matters. Two of the mysteries were in the spy fiction genre, plus Death in a Darkening Mist, a historical novel set in Canada immediately after World War II ended, bordered on spy fiction. 

Here are the five books I read in April.

Graphic novel

Over Easy (2014) by Mimi Pond (Writer and Artist)

This graphic novel is about a young woman working in a diner in Oakland, CA, after having to leave art school due to losing her financial aid. It is based on events in the author's life. I liked the art and the story. It is 272 pages long.

Crime Fiction

Soviet Sources (1990) by Robert Cullen

I may have mentioned that one of my favorite genres is spy fiction. I only recently discovered this first book by Robert Cullen, published in 1990 and later reprinted by Felony and Mayhem in 2006. The main characters are an American journalist for the Washington Tribune, stationed in Moscow, and a Russian journalist who is being manipulated by the KGB. It took awhile to get started, a lot of setting up the individual characters, but it got very interesting at about 100 pages (out of 424). This is part of a three book series and I have all the books.

Death in a Darkening Mist (2017) by Iona Whishaw

This is historical fiction, set in Canada in 1946, immediately after World War II.  Lane Winslow moved to Canada to get away from the UK after her traumatic experiences as a British intelligence agent during the war. She gets involved with an investigation into the death of a Russian man at a local hot spring near King's Cove; is it suicide or was it murder? This is the 2nd book in the series; the first book was very good; this one was even better.

The Romeo Flag (1989) by Carolyn Hougan

I also discovered this book as a reprint published by Felony and Mayhem. I had read another book by this author, Shooting in the Dark, and was very impressed by that book. The Romeo Flag was even better than that book. I would rank it as one of the top espionage novels I have ever read. The plot was amazing; very complex and very convincing. Another very interesting thing in this book (for me) was the connection to Shanghai. I have read two books recently about Shanghai in 1938 and I find that time and place especially intriguing. A significant sub-plot concerns a group of people living in Shanghai in 1941. For anyone who is interested in spy fiction, this book is worth seeking out.

Tatiana (2013) by Martin Cruz Smith

This is the eighth book in the Arkady Renko series; the first book was Gorky Park, published in 1981. This is sort of a police procedural set in Russia; I say this because Arkady is a police investigator, still working for the Procurator in Moscow, but really going his own way in an unsupervised investigation. So there is not much procedure involved. I enjoyed this book tremendously; the story still sticks with me. See my review.

For the past 2-3 months we have been working on cleaning up and redoing the two garden beds we have at the front of our condominium. We still are working on potting new plants in that area; today we potted 6 geraniums. Usually when we go to the nearby plant nursery, my husband takes photos while we are there. The photos at the top and bottom of this post are from recent visits. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Tatiana: Martin Cruz Smith

In late April, I read Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith, the eighth book in the Arkady Renko series. This is sort of a police procedural set in Russia; I say this because Arkady is a police investigator, still working for the Procurator in Moscow, but really going his own way in an unsupervised investigation. So there is not much procedure involved. 

Journalist Tatiana Petrovna has fallen from a six story building in Moscow and the death has been ruled suicide. Arkady is concerned because her body has disappeared, and then later the body reappears and is immediately cremated. The authorities are trying to conceal the truth of her death.

Tatiana was investigating a plot involving the Mafia and Russian officials. One of her sources was the interpreter who wrote up the notes of a meeting of mafia bosses in a code that is supposedly unbreakable. The interpreter gave the coded notebook to Tatiana. After her death, the notebook gets into the hands of Zhenya, a gifted teenager who is Arkady's ward. Zhenya and his new girlfriend are trying to solve the code with their expertise in chess and puzzles.

And that is just a small part of the plot. It is very complex and at times it is hard to tell who can be trusted and who is a foe. As often happens in mysteries, there are just too many characters to keep track of. However, that was a minor problem in this story. 

My thoughts:

I like the setting in Russia. This book was published in 2013 and I think it represents what Russia was like at the time. There is corruption and violence everywhere. 

I also enjoyed learning about Kaliningrad, an exclave of Russia bordered by Lithuania and Poland. It was formerly Konigsberg, part of Germany and was annexed to Russia by the Potsdam Agreement in 1945. A good portion of the book, maybe half, was set in that area. It is a coastal city, the only ice-free Russian port on the Baltic Sea.

It took me about half the way into the book to get invested in the story, which, as I remember it, was true of earlier books in the series. But it was so good; it got better and better as I was reading it.

It took a while to get to know the characters. There are a lot of them. Even with as many books as I had read in the series, I still find Arkady Renko a mystery, not sure what he is seeking in life. I don't think he knows either. I like Sergeant Victor Orlov, the detective he works with, who is in a difficult position, trying to support and help Arkady, yet not get in trouble with his superiors. However, once the story got moving and I understood more about the diverse characters, the book had me hooked. 

I read the previous 7 books in the series, but I read them between 2005 and 2021, so I have forgotten a lot. Therefore, I am pretty sure that you can read most of the books as standalones. Maybe the first three books (Gorky Park, Polar Star, and Red Square) should be read in order, because they lead up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another similar series that I have read is Stuart Kaminsky's Porfiry Rostnikov series, also about a policeman in Moscow. 

Reading Summary for June 2021

I had a great month of reading in June. I loved all of the books I read, in different ways. The books were from my 20 Books of Summer list. And I read two books that were not mysteries.

I did travel to many different places in my reading this month... an unnamed South American country, Germany, Bosnia, Russia, and the UK of course. In addition, in The Travelers, I visited France, Argentina, Italy, and Iceland.

General Fiction

Bel Canto (2001) by Ann Patchett

This was a beautifully written book about a very interesting subject: the people attending a banquet for a Japanese businessman at an embassy in a South American country are taken hostage by insurgents. My review here.

Science Fiction

All Systems Red (2017) by Martha Wells

This is the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries series.  The protagonist is a SecBot (Security robot) that has both human and robotic parts. I was very impressed with this book, especially since it is a novella. It does end with a cliff hanger of a sort, but that was fine with me. Even before reading the book, I expected that I would want to continue the series.

Crime Fiction

The Birdwatcher (2016) by William Shaw

This book is a character-driven police procedural featuring Sergeant William South. He is working on a murder team with a new Detective Sergeant, Alexandra Cupidi, since she is unfamiliar with the area and the body was discovered in his neighborhood. The victim is his next door neighbor, Bob Rayner. Both men were birdwatchers. My review here.

The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (2003) by Dan Fesperman

This is the second book in a short series about Vlado Petric from Bosnia. In the first book he was a homicide detective in Sarajevo, who escaped during the siege of Sarajevo. In this book, he is living in Berlin with his family, and is given the opportunity to return to Bosnia. Both books are very good, but this can be read as a standalone. My review here.

The Travelers (2016) by Chris Pavone

The Washington Post describes The Travelers as a Hitchcockian thriller, and points to similar elements in two of Hitchcock's films, Notorious and North by Northwest. My review here.

Three Stations (2010) by Martin Cruz Smith 

This is the 7th book in the Arkady Renko series by Martin Cruz Smith. In this book, Arkady is a prosecutor's investigator in Moscow but does not have any current cases because he always causes problems, no matter what he investigates. He decides to help his friend and former partner, Victor Orlov, with his current case, the death of a prostitute by drug overdose. My review here.

She Came Back (1945) by Patricia Wentworth

Lady Anne Jocelyn was thought to have died over three years before, but one day she shows up at the door of her husband's home and announces her return. Sir Phillip Jocelyn, her husband, claims that she is an impostor. This is a book in the Miss Silver series, but she doesn't show up until midway in the book, as usual. My review here.

Booked for a Hanging (1992) by Bill Crider

From the dust jacket: "The versatile mystery novelist Bill Crider has created a pantheon of marvelous characters, but none is more real, warm, and thoroughly delightful than Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Claflin County, Texas. In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer." Another wonderful entry in the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series.

READING NEXT?

I am currently reading H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O'Brian and A Killing Spring by Gail Bowen. 

Next I might read On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming or Lockdown by  Peter May or The Art of Violence by S. J. Rozan.

This photo shows plants in containers in our back yard. The photo at the top of the post was taken at the plant nursery we use. Photos were taken by my husband.

Three Stations: Martin Cruz Smith

This is the 7th book in the Arkady Renko series by Martin Cruz Smith. I have read all of the earlier books in the series, but it has been 13 years since I read the previous book, Stalin's Ghost. So I don't remember exactly where we left Arkady in that book. 

In the first book in the series, Gorky Park, published in 1981, Arkady was a homicide investigator in Moscow. In the second book, Polar Star, not published until 1989, he is working on a huge fishing-factory ship in the Bering Sea. [I remember that as my favorite book in the series.] In Red Square (1992), he is back in Moscow and again working on the homicide squad in post-Soviet Russia. Havana Bay takes him to Cuba to investigate a crime that no one else wants investigated. In the fifth book, Wolves Eat Dogs, he ends up in Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion, an area closed to the world since the nuclear disaster in 1986. So Arkady has had quite an interesting life.

In Three Stations, Arkady is a prosecutor's investigator in Moscow but does not have any current cases because he always causes problems, no matter what he investigates. He decides to help his friend and former partner, Victor Orlov, with his current case, the death of a prostitute by drug overdose. Of course, Arkady sees more in the death than a simple overdose and wants to pursue it. Victor is an alcoholic and Arkady is rescuing him from the drunk tank when we first meet him. 

Arkady befriended a young orphan in a previous book. Zhenya was 11 when Arkady first found him at a children's shelter and he is now 15. They have no legal relationship, but Zhenya is welcome to stay with Arkady whenever he wants. Most of the time he chooses to live in the deserted Peter the Great Casino in Three Stations. He is gifted at chess and makes money taking bets on chess games. 

"What tourist maps called Komsomol Square, the people of Moscow called Three Stations for the railway terminals gathered there. Plus the converging forces of two Metro lines and ten lanes of traffic. Passengers pushed their way like badly organized armies through street vendors selling flowers, embroidered shirts, shirts with Putin, shirts with Che, CDs, DVDs, fur hats, posters, nesting dolls, war medals and Soviet kitsch."

Maya is a 15-year-old who arrives on a train at Three Stations only to find her three-week-old baby is missing. She has escaped her captors who were going to give away the baby, but she has no clue how to find her and there are two men searching for Maya. Zhenya is trying to help her but she doesn't know who to trust. 

My thoughts...

For the most part, the author keeps the story moving, but there are places where it is more slowly paced. Smith's stories seem to be less about the mystery or crime and more about the state of Russia and the state of Arkady Renko's life. Smith's writing is beautiful.

Life in Russia is not depicted as very appealing; there are depressing moments and a good bit of violence. This book was fairly short, at 241 pages, and I liked that length.

Between the two story lines, one about the investigation of the death of a young woman, the other following Maya and Zhenya and the search for the baby, I was more invested in the secondary one, which was given less time. The ending was very good, satisfying and moving. 

---------------------------------------------

Publisher:   Simon & Schuster, 2010
Length:       241 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Series:        Arkady Renko, #7
Setting:       Moscow, Russia
Genre:        Police procedural
Source:       I purchased this book when it was published.