Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
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. run of domestic crime -a Muscovite brains his spouse with a vodka bottle and wanders off, leaving a trail of gore that Abbott and Costello could follow.
the murders in the park were a good beginning to the book but it soon became so wrapped up in Russian politics, mixed with corrupt Americans and a slut that had the morality of an ally cat and the intelligence of a Barbie doll. Renko's love interest, Irina, was likewise revealed to have been institutionalized for similarly false "psychiatric problems" and forcibly treated at some earlier time, resulting in a tumor that left her with a severe facial blemish and blind in one eye.MCS nails the atmosphere of snowy, repressive Moscow in the 1980s when history still looks back to Stalin, WW2 and the siege of Leningrad. Chief Inspector Arkady Renko is tasked with solving the murders of three people found in Gorky Park, their bodies frozen and killed weeks earlier, hidden by the snow. We move across Russia and even to New York, before the end of this novel which, in my mind, worked better when set in Moscow than outside it, but is an interesting crime novel. Most of the officers on night duty were out on the annual push to clear the central city of drunks before May Day; conversely, on May Day it would be patriotic to be drunk.
When Arkady begins to suspect a connection between Osborne and the murders, he is warned by his associate, Mendel, a junior official in the Soviet Trade Ministry, that Osborne is an informant for the KGB, and thus regarded as a "friend" by all of Arkady's superiors. This is an old thriller from the dark days of the Iron Curtain and the great Soviet Union, our hero is a Russian but certainly not a faithful member of the party.
I am still scratching my head over the supposed reason for the Soviets to allow Renko to travel to America and the Big Finish reveal. He is a loose cannon, determined at all costs to solve the murder, and paying mere lip service to the Party - letting his membership lapse and unwilling to be bribed or 'influenced'. It’s set in the 1980s in Russia, which was a very, very different time wrought with political nitty-gritties that most people aren’t completely aware of. His personal life is a mess and again this provides a fascinating insight into Russian lives at a time when we knew little about this country. The main detective is always sympathetic and manages to get the job done despite the restraints imposed by his system.
Renko is stubborn with a sly talent for screwing up the plans of powerful people, and there’s a great worn down but not beaten element to the character. He finally identified Osborne as his brother's killer, but was overcome by Osborne's attack dogs when he came to confront him. And once that balance became clear, I was able to sit back and pretend that Renko's Moscow was the actual Moscow of the early 80s and to thoroughly enjoy the maybe Moscow Cruz Smith evoked.Meanwhile, while checking the crime scene again at night Arkady disturbs a man with an American accent who attacks him.
This is the third of the Arkady Renko novels I have read, and I look forward to tracking down the others in the series. A triple murder and Arkady Renko son of a Soviet Hero is put on the case and he really tries to put the case into the hands of his KGB colleagues but they seem not to interested. Martin Cruz Smith didn’t just give us a procedural of how Soviet cops worked, he also provided a view of an entire country living under a system where covering your own ass had become an art form and logic rarely entered in to it. And thus Gorky Park moves toward its suspenseful conclusion, thousands of miles from the park that gave the novel its name.
Set in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Gorky Park is the first book in a series featuring the character Arkady Renko, a Moscow homicide investigator.
Great Deal 
New Comment