With the novel “The North Star,” Martin Cruz Smith continued the “Russian theme” in his work, which he began in “Gorky Park,” a work recognized in the West as one of the best thrillers of the 80s. In "Polar Star" the reader will again meet with Arkady Renko, a former investigator of the Moscow prosecutor's office, who fell into disgrace and was forced to work as a simple sailor on a floating fish factory...One day, a net brings on board the corpse of a young woman. It turns out that she worked on a Soviet ship that also served American trawlers. The original version was suicide. Renko, at the request of the captain, begins an independent investigation...