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

£4.995
FREE Shipping

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

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

RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.995
£4.995 FREE Shipping

In stock

We accept the following payment methods

Description

It begins with a triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing.

And we aging Boomers, fagged like the flagging fox at the snarls and yelps of an inhuman onrush of an exponentially new set of rules in the name of Blind Progress, now have to admit we’re flummoxed and finished. From other reviews that I have read I know that I'm clearly in the minority but I just didn't find anything about this book or the characters to like. Gorky Park was a major best-seller, vaulting Smith to fame after a decade as a moderately successful professional author. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much in Smith’s background that would point ahead toward his writing a series of detective novels set in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation.

I was able to forgive the fact the the author seems to think that Moscow is located at the north pole. Instead, they each want him to say he solved the crimes with a falsified story pointing fingers in a direction each department head wants. Arkady Renko, chief police inspector for the People's Militia, is brought in to investigate the deaths of three people found in the snow of Moscow's Gorky Park. I'm usually OK with this, I love a good forensic crime as much as the next person, but even I found myself wincing a bit at times. If ''Gorky Park'' suffers from a flaw, it is one that is common among even the best examples of the genre.

Gorky Park introduces Arkady Renko, Chief Investigator with the Moscow militia, set during the former Soviet Union under Secretary Brezhnev. Now we have our main characters and the scene – the Soviet Union of the Cold War, with all of the secrecy, informers and intrigue that we expect. The thing is, despite some flaws (the book goes on too long, there's a vast coincidence that Arkady's father holds one of the clues, we have yet another beat-up middle-aged loner with whom a young beauty falls in love.Our anti-hero Renko is actually the son of a famously butcherous general in the Red Army, said to have been a favourite of Josef Stalin years ago (and fictional as far as I can tell). Other times though it seemed to drag and I just wanted it to end so I could move on to the next book. In book two for example, you understand how Renko has come to lose his party membership, a lot of background of which is in Gorky Park.

Reluctantly Arkady is drawn into a web of deceit and corruption at the highest level, with the intention that he fail. It's pretty self-explanatory: because these books are not taking place in our universe, it's up to the author to give us all the details -- to paint the picture, provide shading in just the right places, ensure we can tell what we are supposed to be looking at. He is assigned to the case of three corpses found shot and mutilated in a famous park, and it seems like he keeps working on it for no reason other than the fact that it violated his personal sensibility that it's uncouth to murder people in a place where people come to relax, commiserate with friends, maybe do some ice skating.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. But, you know - reading it in the eighties, I was concurrently witnessing colossal transformations in the same office which was the milieu for my reading - strikingly similar to changes occurring now. After Renko ‘solves’ the murders the way each department wants him to, they each plan to file a report of Renko’s sudden death. 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.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

Delivery & Returns

Fruugo

Address: UK
All products: Visit Fruugo Shop