Book Log 2010 #61: Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith

This latest Arkady Renko novel is set at the Three Stations in question, a railroad terminus for three major lines. Renko, already on thin ice with his superiors, forces their hand when he continues to investigate the death of a young woman in a construction trailer as if it were a homicide - which it shortly becomes. While this is going on, Renko's sort-of foster son, Zhenya, gets mixed up with a girl who comes off of one of the trains claiming her baby was kidnapped, but gets little help in trying to track her down.

More than the other books, this one is more about the current state of Russian society than Renko and his crime-solving. The killing he investigates winds up tying into the new moneyed class and the slow collapse of their house of cards, thanks to the global economic crisis and a crackdown on oligarchs by the same government that helped them earn billions. The other half of the story takes us into the lost generation of Russians, kids who band together to form something that's part gang, part family and all desperate.

Zhenya's part of the story does a nice job of showing how similar he is to Renko, from his dogged pursuit of the case to his (likely doomed) personal feelings for Maya, the girl whose baby is missing.

It's a worthy addition to the series, but one that's a little different.