His first mystery ( Gypsy in Amber – 1971) features NY gypsy art dealer Roman Grey and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The tail-end gets a bit droopy -- Renko loses his shit and goes into a pity spiral, and there's all this mirroring of the ways the U. Here, the sense of place is as compelling (with weather as miserable); the plot and writing, a lot better.

What sets this suspenseful 1981 novel apart is Martin Cruz Smith's meticulous portrayal, in vivid and stunning detail, of day-to-day life in the Soviet Union prior to perestroika and the Soviet Union's dissolution.Other than the fact I was snorting and guffawing when I wasn't supposed to, it IS a well-written mystery. we do not, but because he has thought more deeply and more interestingly about the information we both have. Perhaps the point of Gorky Park is not how crime plays out in some alien and exotic society, but rather how similar that environment has become to our own in the West. Even before the finding of the Gorky Park corpses, Renko has been having plenty of troubles of his own.

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. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything. Smith covers all the bases here; Vodka, Lenin, Stalin, the KGB, the communist party, volgas, this novel lives and breathes Russia.None of these authors reach LeCarre's best, but all three manage to hit close to his average with their best, if that makes 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. Martin Cruz Smith has produced an intense yet finely-balanced murder mystery, one that keeps a reader guessing and on his toes.

In fact, in a section near the end of Gorky Park, Renko does follow the case to a corrupt United States, and engages in deadly intrigue with the FBI who it turn out are in league (for reasons that elude me) with the KGB. Oh, it's a fine inventive entertainment for a mystery, with a lot of twists and near death escapes, tons of corrupt cops and officials, and so many betrayals and hidden motives I am amazed the body count wasn't higher considering the undrained swamps that Renko wades through in not just Russia, but also in New York City. S. and Communist Russia are totally opposite but equally rotten, but then there's an intense final chase sequence that got me muttering at my iPod to hurry up and get it over with, so I guess that worked out. He recuperates in the custody of the State, being regularly interrogated by the KGB and watched over by his old antagonist, KGB Major Pribluda. What protects Renko is his excellent work as an investigator, his known loyalty to Russia (though not the Soviet Union), his ability to think on his feet, a Stoic approach to life, and an ironic sense of humour.

What did bother me was its pacing and it's labyrinthine conspiracy where it seems that almost everybody was colluding with everyone else. The detective's weakness is his love, of course, for a beautiful Soviet dissident who'll do nearly anything to get out of the USSR. When Arkady begins to suspect a connection between Osborne and the murders, he is warned by his associate, Mendel, a junior official in the Soviet Trade Ministry, that Osborne is an informant for the KGB, and thus regarded as a "friend" by all of Arkady's superiors. There was so much reliance on the political and inter-country relationships at the crux of the story that I think it would leave anyone who wasn’t living in 1981 Russia feeling a little lost.However, it is not a thriller full of page-turning non-stop action (even though there are a few dramatic action scenes). I believe that I attempted to read the book once before, perhaps shortly after it's publication, but did not finish.