Gorky Park (Volume 1): Martin Cruz Smith (The Arkady Renko Novels)

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The plot grows even more dense, and the storytelling increasingly tense. As Renko tries to make connections between Osbourne, the KGB, Iamskoy, Kirwill and the murdered troika, someone attempts to kill Irina, and then him. The hunter becomes the hunted, everything closes in, but he never gives up. Perhaps it’s because he’s fallen in love with Irina Asanova. Although the authenticity of Gorky Park is often praised, Cruz Smith spent only two weeks in Russia researching the book, relying mostly on libraries and interviews with Russian immigrants in the United States for the details about life in Cold War Moscow. [9] Film Adaptation [ edit ]

aPolice |zRussia (Federation) |zMoscow |vFiction. |0https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2010106837 Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. A mesmerizing police procedural / murder mystery that also explores Soviet Russia and the dichotomy between east and west. Martin Cruz Smith (born Martin William Smith), American novelist, received his BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. He worked as a journalist from 1965 to 1969 before turning his hand to fiction. His first mystery ( Gypsy in Amber – 1971) features NY gypsy art dealer Roman Grey and was nominated for an Edgar Award. Nightwing was his breakthrough novel and was made into a movie.In 2016, the Strand Magazine named Gorky Park one of the top five Cold War spy novels. [7] The Guardian said that "the book's depiction of contemporary Soviet life was so alarmingly accurate, it was soon banned in the Soviet Union" and "became popular with dissident [Soviet] intellectuals." Gorky Park was awarded the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger award in 1981. [8] Ice skates found on the woman's body lead Arkady to Irina Asanova, a wardrobe girl at a movie studio, who claims that she reported them stolen, and has no idea how they ended up with the victims. However, Arkady tentatively identifies the three bodies as known associates of Irina: her friend Valerya Davidova, Valerya's boyfriend Kostia Borodin, and an American expatriate student named James Kirwill. Arkady gives the woman's skull to Professor Andreev, an anthropologist at Moscow University, who specializes in reconstructing whole faces from bone structure.

Despite being born into the nomenklatura himself, Arkady exposes corruption and dishonesty on the part of influential and well-protected members of the elite, regardless of the consequences. This rebounds on him when his own superior, Iamskoy, and his best friend, a lawyer named Misha, are both revealed to be working with Osborne. Arkady flees a meeting with Misha before a gang of killers arrive, but is too late to prevent Iamskoy from appropriating the reconstructed head and destroying it. Christopher MacLehose was Smith's UK publisher and had previously overseen the respected Collins crime list. He recalls that Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley and Hammond Innes were the bestselling authors of the day. "But very suddenly their approach to the genre seemed to give way," says MacLehose. "A new type of novel emerged with Martin Cruz Smith. Gorky Park was an utterly original idea that was brilliantly executed." It doesn't matter how ridiculous a lie is if it's your only chance of escape. It doesn't matter how obvious the truth is if the truth is you'll never escape." What follows is not just damn fine crime fiction, but an examination of the communist revolution, the good, the bad and the ugly of human nature regardless of ideology and finally a study of the juxtaposition of us and them.Career: 1965-69 journalist and editor, Press Association, Philadelphia Daily News, Magazine Management. Martin William Smith was born in Reading, Pennsylvania to John Calhoun Smith, jazz musician and Louise Lopez, an American Indian of Pueblo descent, jazz singer, teacher, Amerindian rights militant, and Miss New Mexico in 1939. [1] Martin was educated at Germantown Academy, in Ft Washington, Pennsylvania, then at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing in 1964. He is of partly Pueblo, [2] Spanish, [3] Senecu del Sur and Yaqui ancestry. [4] Career [ edit ] For example—and this makes for a noteworthy variation on the typical policier—Renko at first tries not to solve his case, but instead to find some piece of evidence—of foreign involvement or some form of conspiracy—that will allow him to dump the whole vexing affair in the lap of the KGB. The vodka-fueled bludgeonings he usually investigates are easy to handle, but these three frozen corpses in Gorky Park—two men and one woman shot to death, their faces and fingertips removed to prevent identification—are another matter entirely. This is definitely something that might attract the attention of his superiors. And that kind of attention is something Arkady Renko does not desire. Renko is a brilliant investigator. Dangerously so. He cares more about solving crimes than laminating his Communist Party membership card. This is a source of consternation to his wife, who begins an affair that humiliates him. The KGB has put a man in his team of detectives. Meanwhile, Iamskoy, the Moscow town prosecutor draws him close, offers protection and tries to demonstrate some of the benefits of playing the Party way. Renko is a guest at the prosecutor’s dacha, and in another sequence accompanies him to a secret bathhouse – one built for Joseph Stalin’s pleasure – where he eats caviar and drinks champagne with aging communists. There he meets a rich, powerful American fur dealer called Osbourne who seems to have the key to the city.

You see, managers and politicos both had learned from the much-ballyhooed corruption of the seventies.This is probably my most favorite "detective" novel read to date, because it is so much more than a mystery--it is really a masterfully written, poignant, cynical, realistic, and all-too-palpable portrayal of life behind the Iron Curtain. Having been born and raised in this part of the world before 1989, I almost cannot believe how well an American author was able to capture the dreary, corrupt, existentially-dispiriting and hopeless atmosphere of the era, without moralizing and without futile and inapt comparisons to a cheery, hopeful, democratic "west". In fact, Cruz Smith manages to draw parallels between the two as equally corrupt, and oppressive - in their own ways. And resolving the case, in a nice twist, takes Renko to the other side of the Iron Curtain – to New York City – where the prospect of an exchange involving smuggled goods also holds forth the possibility of freedom in the West for Arkady Renko and Irina Asanova. Yet Renko sees that the prospects for a happy resolution of their dangerous situation are remote at best: