Gorky Park

LoveReading Says

Smith was a fanatically dedicated fiction writer who honed his craft by running a 1960s pulp magazine in New York. The content was pacy, robust and manly short-story fiction. Smith commissioned work from writers such as Ted Irish, Dr Emile Korngold and Sol Roman – all of whom were himself, typing like mad under pseudonyms.

But his aim was a big novel idea he had – a Soviet detective solving a sensitive crime in Moscow, thereby mining the exquisite difficulties faced by a diligent policeman working inside a rigidly bureaucratic and hostile structure. Smith saw his detective as a reluctant Party member, possibly the disappointing and underachieving son of a Soviet hero.

His name would be Arkady Renko. The result was brilliant – a milestone thriller that blended American hardboiled energy with a weary, wary, old-country ambience. Later – as a Brit writing about America – I took great comfort from Smith’s necessarily limited research. You couldn’t just show up in Brezhnev's Russia and wander around with a notebook and a camera.

There was no internet. No Street View. But Gorky Park felt totally authentic. I had been to America more times than Smith had been to Moscow, so I took his triumph as a form of permission.

Comments from our Guest Editor, Lee Child

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