Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith is an American mystery writer who produced a 10-book series about Arkady Renko, the chief homicide investigator in Moscow. This novel was the first of the series, and the first three of those books were written prior to the fall of the Soviet empire. The book was an international sensation and was initially banned from Russia until after the collapse of the empire.
The book opened with three murders that took place in Gorky Park, the victims all having been mutilated to make their identification more difficult. It is a complex story involving various Russian police forces and the FBI, international business transactions, and the complexities of trying to solve a crime in a dictatorial county. The plot involved a nearly constant shifting of alliances among the principal characters, and nearly constant lying of the characters to each other. Arkady was a great character who like so many other detective protagonists, had his own human faults and weaknesses with which to contend.
Historically, this is an important novel in the development of international crime and espionage novels, and I think I’ve been neglectful not to have read and reviewed it before now. On the other hand, I have such a pile of promising books on my nightstand, I’m not motivated to dive into the next nine novels in this series at this time.
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