General Information
===================
 Title:                  Polar Star
 Author:                 Martin Cruz Smith
 Read By:                Frank Muller
 Copyright:              1989
 Audiobook Copyright:    1989
 Genre:                  Speech
 Publisher:              Recorded Books
 Abridged:               No
 Series:                 Arkady Renko
 Number:                 2
 
Original Media Information
==========================
 Media:                  CDs
 Number:                 10
 Source:                 Library
 Condition:              Good

File Information
================
 Number of MP3s:         10
 Total Duration:         11:13:35
 Total MP3 Size:         192.74
 Parity Archive:         No
 Ripped With:            Cool Edit 2000
 Encoded With:           LAME 3.97
 Encoded At:             CBR 40 kbit/s 44100 Hz Mono
 Normalize:              Peak Normalization
 Noise Reduction:        None
 ID3 Tags:               Set, v1.1, v2.3

Book Description
================
Barnes and Noble review

Synopsis 
Formerly a police inspector, Arkady Renko is now "a second-class seaman 
on the factory ship Polar Star in the Bering Sea, working on the 'slime 
line', gutting the fish before they are frozen. Then the body of one 
of the crew,a Georgian girl called Zina Patiashvili, is dragged up in 
a net, and the captain orders Renko to investigate her death. . . . 
By the skin of his teeth he escapes refrigeration, incineration and 
death by drowning before finding out what's really going on aboard the 
Polar Star and its fleet of American trawlers." 

Annotation 
Arkady Renko, the obsessed, dedicated cop of Gorky Park, has lost his 
party membership. He now toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship 
working with American trawlers in the middle of the Bering Sea. But 
when he is ordered by his captain to investigate an "accident" that 
has all the marks of murder, Renko once again finds himself face-to-face 
with the Soviet bureaucracy.



From the Publisher
Arkady Renko has made too many enemies and now he toils in obscurity 
on a Russian factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when 
a female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Arkady 
becomes obsessed with the case and once again discovers more than he 
wants to know and certainly more than he bargained for....



 From the Critics
From T.J. Binyon - The Times Literary Supplement  
Martin Cruz Smith does a magnificent job on the background: by the time 
we have finished the book we . . . know exactly what it's like to work 
on the slime line; we've butted through the Bering Sea in all possible 
weather conditions, tramped from one ship to another over the ice sheet, 
and paid a short andrevealing visit to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. 
All this is not only interesting, but wholly absorbing, and in Karp 
Korobetz, the ex-convict, . . . the author has created a powerful and 
menacing character. But the setting overpowers the plot. . . . {As Renko} 
moves, in leisurely fashion, from one interviewto another, attention 
ebbs and, as in Gorky Park, the final revelation seems almost anticlimactic.---
 
From Robert Stuart Nathan - The New York Times Book Review  
Eight years after we left Arkady on a glittering field of American snow 
.. . he returns, weary but not broken and as compelling a human being 
as ever,in the stunning 'Polar Star.' . . . {If} his escapes are too 
miraculous, if the complicated plot sometimes forces the reader backward 
to retrieve the clueson which Arkady exercises his deductive powers, 
and if at times we miss the passionate love affair at the heart of 'Gorky 
Park' {BRD 1981}, the novel stillholds countless pleasures. . . . Rich 
in humor, generous in spirit, endlesslyentertaining and deeply serious, 
{this} is not merely the work of our best writer of suspense, but one 
of our best writers, period.
 
From Paul Gray - Time  
Renko's laconic sense of the ridiculous endeared him to millions of 
Western readers during his last adventure and will no doubt do so again. 
'In irony,' he remarks about his homeland, 'we lead the world.' There 
is, it must be added, something incongruous in a character who so diligently 
labors for a political system that tries to crush him. When one character 
asks why he so stubbornly pursues the facts, Renko replies, 'That's 
a mystery to us all.' And hardly the only one in this action-heavy novel. 
If anything, the plot of Polar Star can seem, to the jaundiced eye, 
a trifle rigged. . . . Such objections, though, are likely to crop up 
only when the novel has been finished and set aside. In the full rush 
of the chase, Smith and Renko still seem irresistible.
 
From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly  
Sprung from a state psychiatric hospital, Arkady Renko takes refuge 
in Siberia, ultimately working on a Soviet factory ship in the Bering 
Sea. When one of his shipmates is murdered, he's pressed into service. 
``Those eagerly awaiting the return of Renko, the saturnine, chain-smoking 
police investigator from Moscow who appeared in the bestseller Gorky 
Park , will be glad to know their hero is back in fine form,'' said 
PW. Author tour. (July)

