SLCL Presents Bestselling International Espionage Author Martin Cruz Smith Today

The St. Louis County Library Foundation presents bestselling suspense author Martin Cruz Smith for a discussion and signing of his latest thriller "Tatiana" today, November 18, at 7:00 p.m. at Library Headquarters, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd.

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from Left Bank Books.

The event is sponsored by Maryville University.

Arkady Renko, star of Martin Cruz Smith's spy masterpiece "Gorky Park" and one of the iconic investigators of contemporary fiction, has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation as obsessed with secrecy and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In "Tatiana," the melancholy hero- cynical, analytical, and quietly subversive-unravels a mystery as complex and dangerous as modern Russia itself.

The fearless reporter Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow the same week that a mob billionaire, Grisha Grigo-renko, is shot and buried with the trappings due a lord. No one else makes the connection, but Arkady is transfixed by the tapes he discovers of Tatiana's voice describing horrific crimes in words that are at odds with the Kremlin's official versions. The more Arkady delves into Tatiana's past, the more she leads him into a surreal world of wandering sand dunes, abandoned children, and a notebook written in the personal code of a dead translator.

More than a mystery, "Tatiana" is Martin Cruz Smith's most ambitious and politically daring novel since "Gorky Park." It is a story rich in character, black humor and romance, with an insight that is the hallmark of a writer the New York Times has called "endlessly entertaining and deeply serious . . . [not merely] our best writer of suspense, but one of our best writers, period."

Martin Cruz Smith's novels include the bestsellers "Stalin's Ghost," "Gorky Park," "Rose," "December 6," "Polar Star" and "Stallion Gate." He is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers and a recipient of Britain's Golden Dagger Award.

Program sites are accessible. Upon two weeks notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Contact St. Louis County Library by phone 314-994-3300 or visit http://www.slcl.org.

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