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.
In Soviet Russia, a triple murder in Moscow amusement centre, Gorky Park, leaves three corpses frozen in the snow. But when Senior Investigator in the Moscow Prosecutor's Office Arkady Renko arrives, he finds that the brutal murder leaves the victims unidentifiable with faces and fingers missing. Renko must battle political and corporate corruption internationally, from the USSR to the USA, to uncover the truth - and he must fight for his own life in doing so. Meanwhile, he is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything.
Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include Gorky Park, Stallion Gate, Polar Star, Red Square, Rose, Havana Bay and Stalin’s Ghost. A recipient of the CWA Gold Dagger for fiction in the UK, he is also two-time winner of the Hammett Prize in the United States. He lives with his wife and children in northern California.
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