Zina, not to put too fine a point on it, was a slut.

A smile is gone from the galley.' But it soon appears the victim in fact spent very little time in the galley. When interrogated, her co-workers provide richly Slavic eulogies: 'Wherever there was laughter, there was our Zina' and 'Poor Zina. She slid loose-limbed like a swimmer as the fish poured from the net.' The body is that of a woman, one of 50 in the Polar Star's crew of 270. sculpin with heads like dragons cod, some bloated like balloons by their air bladders, some exploded into soft tissue and pink slime coral crabs as hairy as tarantulas. There were thick, bruised-looking bullheads. 'Out of the net and into the light spilled a flood of silver pollack, a whole school that had been caught en masse and dredged up like bright coins. It happens aboard a Russian factory ship in a fishing fleet in the Bering Sea, as a net full of fish is lowered through the fog and glaring searchlights. Who can forget the three bodies in the opening pages of his Gorky Park? Hideously disfigured to prevent identification - faces flayed, teeth shattered and fingertips cut off - wasn't it nice to read how peaceful they looked all dusted with snow? In Polar Star, Smith's continuation of the adventures of Arkady Renko, the detective of Gorky Park, another corpse appears in spectacular fashion. $19.95 NOBODY CAN produce a corpse like Martin Cruz Smith. POLAR STAR By Martin Cruz Smith Random House.

Polar star book