Arkady Renko, the ace Moscow detective, made his debut in the 1981 crime bestseller Gorky Park.
Into this venal Russia comes a teenager from the provinces, Maya, whose baby has been stolen from her on the Moscow-bound train. As she searches for her daughter, Maya is preyed on by pimps in the Three Stations area of Komsomol Square, with its glue-sniffing chancers and scufflers.
In another part of town, meanwhile, a prostitute is found murdered in a trailer park. Her murder appears to be connected to the baby-snatching episode. Assigned to the case, Inspector Renko is exasperated to learn that his associate, Sergeant Victor Orlov, has to be pulled out of the drunk tank again ("Life would be wonderful without vodka," Orlov tipsily declares, "but since the world is not wonderful, people need vodka").
Hungover, Orlov sets out with Renko in a dilapidated Lada squad car to investigate the baby's abduction and prostitute's murder.
Unfortunately, the crimes do not appear to connect for many pages, and the novel remains in narrative disarray while Smith struggles to draw the reader in. Along the way, we encounter a colourfully grotesque cast of Tajik drug smugglers, nightclub bouncers and other gangland cuties, as well as a homicidal ballet dancer.
Shockingly, Renko has no sooner solved the prostitute's murder than he is suspended. The prosecutor's office does not want him to dig deeper into crimes that compromise important people. Cashiered, Renko angrily pushes on with his sleuthing, only to uncover financial malpractice in the highest of places.
Martin Cruz Smith does not disappoint in his unsparing depictions of child prostitution and drug addiction in the boondocks of Moscow. Great crime fiction is also social criticism, and the author's research into the seamy side of Russian reality lifts him high above the hack thriller-writer. If Three Stations reads at times like a preliminary sketch for a more detailed work, it remains a top-notch Renko thriller, atmospheric and bleakly humorous.