" Where is this hole I hear about ? "

Arkadi Renko, Martin Cruz-Smith's favorite character, is confronted, novel after novel, to different kinds of attractive, dangerous or vibrant women. Even if none of them could compare to his true and late lover, Irina. In "Stalin's ghost", Arkadi has to fight Tanya, a highly good-looking, multi-talented blonde : harpist, pole-dancer, and killer, possibly . Extract : Arkadi meets Tanya again, in an exotic bar in Kver, a russian walla-walla, long after she tried to kill him with a steel wire and after he was shot in the head by a disturbed man. A dangerous life he's got, Arkadi.

" Tanya and a peppy little dancer were up next. The first time he had seen Tanya she was in a white evening gown strumming the harp at the Metropol. In little more than the flesh she was even more in control, with a cool smile and long strides that prompted rhytmic clapping at ringside...

Tanya was sex-wrapped around a pole, with a slow head-down slither that seemed to swallow brass. The other dancer swung around her pole like a dynamo, which seemed quaintly Soviet. "Tanya had classical training for the ballet, but she grew too big for the men to catch." Urman turned to Arkady. "Well, you've wrestled her, you know." Pacheco's ears perked up. "Wrestled? That sounds interesting." "We had a special moment," Arkady said...

Tany slid off the runway, ignored her ringside regulars and climbered onto Arkadi's lap, where she breathed heavily and stamped him with sweat and powder. She kissed him af is they were lovers reunited and when he tried to ease her off she clung to his neck. "Where is this hole I hear about ? Is it the size of a bottle cap ?" She pressed herself against his face while she felt his scalp. All that remainded of his operation were drain scars, but she found them. If Arkady had humiliated her, she would humiliate him. "

Martin Cruz-Smith : "Stalin's ghost" - Pan Books - ISBN 978-0-330-44857-4

Photo : Keith Hartwell