Rating: 
Summary: Great characters & setting, weak plot
Review: The fourth Arkady Renko book (following Gorky Park, Polar Star, and Red Square), takes the dour Russian police detective to a struggling and tattered Havana. On the heels of his lover's accidental death, he receives a telegram warning him that an old friend posted to the Russian embassy in Havana is in danger. After paying for his own ticket and flying halfway around the world, he arrives in time to watch his friend's decomposing body being pulled from the bay. The story that ensues is an extremely convoluted thriller, more enjoyable for its portrait of modern Cuba than for its weak plot.Grim Renko is the ultimate fish out of water in a Cuba where Russians are despised as back-stabbing former allies and betrayers of the revolution. One the book's most enjoyable aspects is watching Renko poke around with virtually no resources at his disposal. With no authority, no Spanish, and only the most tenuous of allies, he starts looking into his friend's death, galvanized by an unprovoked attempt on his own life. As he negotiates a city struggling to exist under the US embargo without Russian aid, he discovers a civil society, government bureaucracy, and economy constantly on the brink of failure. Eventually he is helped by a female police officer who, in a society where everyone must run some kind of illegal scam to bring in enough money to live on, has idealistic and unshakable ideas about justice. Of course, their pairing up is as cheezy as it is inevitable, but that's a minor flaw compared to the confusing plot the characters are run through. As the book wears on, Renko starts stumbling into a rather massive and ridiculous conspiracy. It's a scheme totally disproportional to the fine nuances and detail that are so enjoyable elsewhere in the book, and its masterminds are shabby cardboard characters compared to the Cubans Smith so carefully constructs. So, read the book for its atmosphere of modern Cuba, populated by hustlers, sex workers, musicians, mechanics, Santeria priests, Abakua secret society members, veterans of wars in Angola and Ethiopia, and mouthy grandmothers who live in a realm where the socialist ideal is rapidly rusting, and boom-boom decadence of the West is capturing the hearts and minds.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Arkady Renko Tale
Review: The fourth in Smith's intelligent series about Moscow detective Arkady Renko is set in Cuba. Renko's ennui brings him to Havana to look into the death of an old friend. As usual, he gets knocked around a bit, unravels complicated conspiracies, bumps into interesting women, and utters some precious self-deprecating one liners. Readers will also learn more about the fate of his truest love, Irina. A great addition to the Renko series.
Rating:
Summary: Great Arkady Renko Tale
Review: The fourth in Smith's intelligent series about Moscow detective Arkady Renko is set in Cuba. Renko's ennui brings him to Havana to look into the death of an old friend. As usual, he gets knocked around a bit, unravels complicated conspiracies, bumps into interesting women, and utters some precious self-deprecating one liners. Readers will also learn more about the fate of his truest love, Irina. A great addition to the Renko series.
Rating:
Summary: Havana Bay
Review: The most recent (fourth) in the Inspector Arkady Renko series in Martin Cruz Smith's top notch series of "Russian" mysteries. We can only hope Smith will come up with more Renko mysteries. Since he is one of the most interesting protagonists in fiction today. Unfortunately Smith only writes a book on average of every FIVE years).
Many writers today find a successful formula and stick to it... over and over. The only thing the same from Martin Cruz Smith's works are their high level of excitement, interesting characters and plot development. Havana Bay lives up to Smith's past work. What he does best is gives the reader an insiders' view of a society totally different than what the audience is used to. Whether it be Cuba in this novel, Japan in December 4th: A Novel, or the Soviet Union in Gorky Park, with his characters on the verge of an exciting adventure for the reader to be a part of.
Another fun read from Smith. I enjoy Smith's books!
John Row
Rating: 
Summary: Osorio steals the book
Review: We start with a dead Russian body being fished out of the water by Cubans for the benefit of Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, who has been called in by the Russian Embassy to investigate the dead Russian's death and cause, etc. Through Renko we visit and smell Fidel Castro's exotic, erotic and decaying Havana and an assortment of Cuban characters, most of whom seem to speak Russian and are quite caustic to their former allies. Cruz scrambles the story several times and builds and changes hard-to-follow conspiracies that ends up with Cubans changing their stories, allegiances and support - all to confuse and throw Renko off his scent. There's also some sex between Renko and the black Cuban detective, which doesn't make sense, because she really dislikes Russians. The best find in this book is the interesting tapestry of Cuban life that Cruz describes, with Santeria, racism, forced ingenuity, brutality and a colorful city destined to continue to be one of the jewels of the New World.
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