The concept of the aging of characters is something authors treat differently. It seems that some prefer their characters to be timeless and others let them age. The frequency of publication is also a consideration. Ed McBain wrote more than fifty novels in the 87th Precinct series over a fifty-year period. Perhaps if you were reading them sequentially and annually, the fact that the key characters hardly aged would not be so disconcerting as it was when you read them over, say, five or six years, as I did. Then you have someone like Martin Cruz-Smith, who first wrote about the idiosyncratic, wise-cracking Moscow detective Arkady Renko in the early eighties. 'Tatiana', though, is only the eighth in the series. In 'Gorky Park' the Soviet Union was not just still in business, it was at the apogee of its 'evil empire' status. Well over thirty years later, I have no concept of how old Arkady is, as we see him so infrequently that there is little continuity of time or place. Additionally, the world he worked in has changed to an unimaginable degree. Fortunately, Russian cynicism, and corruption remain ripe topics and murder, cover-ups, gangsters, and dishonest politicians make for a great story in this novel. When a well-known journalist is flung off her balcony in Moscow and it is labelled a suicide, Renko starts to look into the matter. The trail takes him to the Russian oblast set between Poland and Lithuania, formerly East Prussia, home to military and naval bases and the failing city of Kalingrad. The action moves back and forth between the two cities as Arkady, his chess-playing ward, and a mystery woman figure it all out. Here, solving the mystery doesn't necessarily mean that justice is served, although it partially is, just that injustice and corruption are deferred.
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