Gorky Park (Arkady Renko, No. 1) [Paperback]

Martin Cruz Smith (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 13, 2007

“Brilliant . . . enough enigmas within enigmas within enigmas to reel the mind.”
–The New Yorker

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything.

“Once one gets going, one doesn’t want to stop. . . . The action is gritty, the plot complicated, [and] the overriding quality is intelligence.”
–The Washington Post

“Reminds you just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be.” –The New York Times Book Review

“An unbelievable achievement . . . vivid, witty . . . completely fascinating.”
–Boston Herald American

“Gripping, romantic, and dazzlingly original.”
–Cosmopolitan

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

10 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

"Brilliant...One of the best books of the season."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.


From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 373 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (March 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812977246
• ISBN-13: 978-0812977240
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (96 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #175,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Martin Cruz-Smith's novels include Stalin's Ghost, Gorky Park, Rose, December 6, Polar Star and Stallion Gate. A two-time winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers and a recipient of Britain's Golden Dagger Award, he lives in California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 74 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps the best of its genre March 8, 2001

By sid1gen

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I often return to "Gorky Park." I almost didn't go there at all. The film was not very good, although I liked Joanna Pakula. One day I read "Polar Star" (literally in one day, since I could not put it down) and I was hooked: I had to read "Gorky Park." Almost ten years later, I think I've read it ten times. I can always spare a day or two for one of my favorite books.

Welcome to the world of Investigator Arkady Renko, whose superiors use him, whose wife doesn't love him, whose country is like an insane asylum where the patients have the run of the place and sane people like Renko do the best they can. This is a great mystery novel, but the level of Smith's writing puts him far above the level of what we expect from "genre" novels. His characters became real people for whose fate I really cared. His plot is complicated but not overwhelmingly so. He does not trick the reader. And his detective, the militia investigator Arkady Renko, is one of the most memorable detectives in fiction: smart without being pedantic, intelligent, patriotic (yes, our Arkady truly loves his country), loyal to his friends and the woman he falls in love with. This is not the picture of a perfect man, but that of a basically good man. Renko is believable in his feelings and attitudes, and that is due to Smith's talent. Also thanks to the author we get an almost Dickensian description of Moscow and the inner workings of criminal investigations in the old Soviet Union. I felt I was in Moscow, and I finished reading the book truly caring for the characters in it, particularly Renko. Smith's novel is powerful, well-written, engaging, insightful, and a lesson in how talented writing can be applied to genre fiction for the benefit of everyone involved. "Gorky Park" and the other Renko novels are so far above genre, they make the rest look really bad, and they provide hope for genre novels in general: talent should not be divorced from entertainment. Excellent read.

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars start of a terrific series April 18, 2004

By Chapulina R

Format:Mass Market Paperback

It was unfortunate I saw the Hollywood version of "Gorky Park" before reading the novel. The film does not do justice to the main character or the storyline. It cannot compare to the book! After reading "Polar Star" and Red Square", the second and third installments of the series, I picked up the original and loved it. More recently, "Havana Bay" was published, and later this year a long-awaited fifth novel, "Wolves Eat Dogs", will be released. Arkady Renko, the protagonist of the series, is an honest, dedicated, hard-working Ukrainian cop. When he was Chief Homicide Inspector for the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, he took charge of a grisly murder case involving the international fur trade. Very quickly, he fell afoul of the KGB. That's how his troubles began, which pursue him throughout all four novels. I recommend this series highly. The settings are supurbly drawn -- from snowbound Moscow to an Arctic Sea fish processing ship, from a steam-filled banya to the steamy port of Havana. Wherever he goes, Arkady brings his cynical love-hate relationship with the Soviet system which often impedes his work. Like Columbo, he outsmarts the sly evil-doers while seemingly fumbling his way along the investigation. And he has more lives than the proverbial cat as his sleuthing lands him in the most lethal stews! Author Martin Cruz Smith has created one of the most likable protagonists in police fiction. Cleverly writing the character as just "Arkady" -- intimately using his first name -- helps endear him to the reader. We care for Arkady because of his moral strengths, his humility and compassion, and despite his weaknesses. Along the way, Arkady has fallen obsessively in love with the most unsuitable woman imaginable: an obnoxious, abrasive dissident who not only treats him like dirt and breaks his heart, but is the cause of his political woes. It is hard to lament in the least her later demise! But we sympathize with our hero's suffering and rejoice in his small rewards. Reward yourself by reading this exceptional series, beginning with "Gorky Park"!

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Cynical, disturbing police procedural inside U.S.S.R. December 8, 2005

By Scott Schiefelbein VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Martin Cruz Smith's "Gorky Park" is a literary thriller, and is more notable for Smith's unique style and his gift for capturing the bizarre Soviet world than it is its conventional plot and resolution.

"Gorky Park" is ostensibly a police procedural, where maverick investigator Arkady Renko is the "one good cop" in a corrupt justice system investigating the murders of three young people in Moscow. Of course, this being a thriller, Renko's investigation takes him high up the food chain, where he gets a chance to expose high corruption, nefarious deeds by officials, and the hypocrisy of the world he lives in. And, of course, he falls in love with a gorgeous woman along the way.

Two things set "Gorky Park" apart from conventional thrillers you see in every airport bookstore. The first has to be Smith's command of daily life in the Soviet Union. Published in 1981 before the collapse of the Soviet Union, "Gorky Park" sweeps along with the rhythm of daily life under communism, and it's a disjointing, jarring rhythm indeed. Smith combines an eye for detail with what must have been eye-numbing research to transport the reader to another world that is completely alien to Americans. The novel starts out in Moscow and ends in New York, and it's interesting that Smith is so able to capture the jarring differences between the two cities.

Smith's style also elevates "Gorky Park." Too many thrillers use language in purely functional terms, and dialogue is invariably direct and serves the purpose of clearly advancing plot or building character. In "Gorky Park," Smith is much more subtle than your average author. Many passages and lines require re-reading to figure out what is actually being said -- not that Smith writes badly, it's just that most of "Gorky Park" is heavily laden with subtext, and Smith also has the patience to let "Gorky Park" unfold gradually. While this may slow the novel down somewhat, it also makes the story deeper and richer.

"Gorky Park" is not a pleasant novel, or a "fun read." Arkady Renko is not one of those cops who throws off pitch-perfect quips, and he is not a physical juggernaut prone to kicking butt and taking names. Rather, he is the perfect investigator for the Soviet system - dogged, intelligent, and deeply cynical. It's that cynicism that lets Renko see his fellow Soviets for who they are, and this insight makes him a great detective.

I admire "Gorky Park" more than I like it, which is why I give the novel only four stars. Renko, it must be said, is a bit of a downer. The novel opens with the dissolution of Renko's marriage, and Renko spends most of the novel in a morose funk (and not necessarily due to the divorce). Renko is a man who has been almost entirely crushed by the Soviet system and also by his family, and all that is left in his is a spark of his former self. It is that spark, that undying, implacable fire inside Renko that makes him such a compelling character. Dour, fatalistic, cyncial, pessimistic, to be sure, but very compelling.