'Renko,' Volovoi read, as if familiarizing himself with a problem. 'Chief Investigator. Dismissed. Expelled from the Party. Psychiatric rehabilitation. You see, I have the same file as the captain has. Assigned to labour in the eastern section of the Russian Republic. Siberia.'
Arkady Renko is exiled on the Polar Star, a Soviet factory ship which trawls the freezing waters from Siberia to Alaska: current status seaman (second class), his movements shadowed by those who know his past. Then Renko is given a chance to reclaim his freedom by investigating a lonely and very mysterious death...
"Splendid...the reader will be kept guessing to the very end"
--Evening Standard--
"Polar Star is not morely the work of our best writer of suspense, but one of our best writers, period"
--New York Times--
"Cruz Smith's ability is to tell both a thriller and a novel at once, without losing either strand. There are whispers of Conrad and Graham Greene in this novel"
--Sydney Morning Herald--