Gorky Park (Volume 1): Martin Cruz Smith (The Arkady Renko Novels)

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If ''Gorky Park'' suffers from a flaw, it is one that is common among even the best examples of the genre. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything. It’s the early ‘80s and three bodies have been found under the snow in Moscow’s Gorky Park with their fingertips removed and their faces peeled off to prevent identification. Russians won wars because they threw themselves before tanks, which was not the right mentality for a master criminal.

There are a few things you should know about Gorky Park before you read this review for said review to make any sense. This is probably my most favorite "detective" novel read to date, because it is so much more than a mystery--it is really a masterfully written, poignant, cynical, realistic, and all-too-palpable portrayal of life behind the Iron Curtain. In spite of his weakened state, Arkady laughs when he realizes from his interrogators' questions that Iamskoy was himself a high-ranking KGB officer, planted as a spy in the militsiya, and his superiors were badly embarrassed to find that he betrayed them to help Osborne. Yet – and this is no doubt one of the factors that influenced novelist Smith in composing this novel – the U.Arkady is used to handling homicides resulting from drunkenness, and these murders have the hallmarks of a state-sanctioned assassination. There is a falling-off at the end, when the plot turns about three notches more than my credulity is prepared to be stretched.

During this reread I found myself comparing Renko to one of my favorite fictional detectives, Matt Scudder, because they’re both pragmatic men who don’t see the point in fighting a system that’s inherently corrupt, but there’s a quiet streak of idealism in both that believes that some crimes have to be answered for.Realizing that the only way to reduce his superiors' ire is to kill all the illicit sables, Arkady picks up Osborne's hunting rifle, but instead he decides to break open their cages and release them into the forest. Bear in mind this supposedly takes place in the late 1970s, when the Soviet Union's heady economic, scientific and military victories of earlier years were becoming distant memories.

Set in the late 70s (the book was first published in 1981) this is the SOVIET UNION, Leonid freaking Brezhnev, and still some old pre-revolution folks running around Moscow. Foe the reader who like an adult thriller in a world from darker times, but you'll find yourself wondering what has changed from the Soviet Union towards Putins' Russia. The way Martin Cruz Smith manages to beautify the saddest and weakest vulnerabilities of human beings while showing that that is what makes us strong in the first place. A wonderfully textured, vivid look behind the Iron Curtain, Gorky Park is a tense, atmospheric, and memorable crime story. But this is a fully realized world, a backdrop that adds a great deal of freshness to yet another twisty detective thriller.Cleverly and intelligently told, The Girl from Venice is a truly riveting tale of love, mystery and rampant danger.