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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Back in the USSR, 6 April 2009
Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is easy to forget that there was a time when Russia was considered a frighteningly futuristic society: organised, disciplined, crimeless and technologically advanced. We have become used to regarding the post-soviet Russia as a country travelling backwards, characterised by territorial disintegration, (dis)organised crime, shortening population lifespan and economic failure. President Putin has reversed this trend somewhat, but it takes time to shake a reputation, and reading Gorky Park today is like stepping into a lost world.
In Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith takes the classic Raymond Chandler detective thriller and transposes it into the USSR of the early 1980s. Three bodies are found in a Moscow Park, the bodies have been mutilated to hide their identities, and Militia investigator Arkady Renko is given the task to finding the killer. The regular Chandler stereotypes all make an appearance: the femme fatale, the false friends and the bogeymen. The plot moves quickly and unexpectedly. Smith's depiction of the USSR is vivid and convincing, a fascinating world of paranoia, informers, state ideology and bureaucratic conflict. The unusual context puts an intriguing accent onto the standard detective thriller - this is a world where the investigator has one eye on the crime and another on abiding to communist party politics and ideology.
Smith writes excellent entertainment fiction, building suspense gradually and crafting an exciting and engaging story. My only criticism is that he seems unsure of how and when the end the story, and the overextended plot developments at the end somewhat stretch the novel's credibility. The final part of the novel seems unnecessary. The decision taken by Renko at the conclusion of the novel seemed to me, well, disappointingly ridiculous. Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.
As a fun thriller, Gorky Park is worth revisiting. It occurs to me that Robert Harris's novel Fatherland owes a strong influence to Gorky Park, but Smith is a better writer.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smith's Masterpiece, 22 Oct 1998
By A Customer
I first read this book in 1984 and have been re-reading it at intervals ever since. This has to be one of the best novels of its kind in the last twenty years, certainly on a par with the recent works by Robert Harris (Fatherland etc).The story revolves around the discovery of three faceless, nameless bodies in Gorky Park by a Moscow Militia detective and the trail of corruption he untangles as a result. I won't reveal too much more about the plot, except to say it doesn't involve any of the usual Western/Russian staples about nuclear missiles, spies etc - read it yourself! The book was so successful in evoking the atmosphere of the Breshnez regime that the author was allegedly banned for a number of years afterwards - in fact, it took Smith seven years to write the sequel (Polar Star). It was also made into a more than adequate film with William Hurt.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling cold war thriller, 30 Aug 2006
I first read this superb book at the tender age of 19 shortly after visiting the (then) USSR and strolling round Gorky park in the snow. I'd seen the film of course and half expected the film to follow it closely but I was wrong. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film but the book was something else. More twists, more plot, more gruesome and, perhaps most importantly, more Russian.
Times change and the USSR came to an end. Cold War thrillers disappeared from the book shelves and were replaced by an endless cavalcade of serial killer stories and so on. But Gorky Park still gnawed away at me and I read it again. What a great decision!
The book is still as fresh as it was when it first took the literary world by storm with the discovery of the three bodies in the snow still shocking, Comrade Major Pribluda still more than a bit like Dracula, the elusive Irina Asanova still as alluring and the sardonic and world-weary Arkady Renko still the best post-war literary detective.
Whether reading this novel for the first time or reading it again after a long break this book is still a belting yarn. It has thrilling set pieces, careful plot development and has an indefinable Russian melancholy about it. Perhaps that is Martin Cruz Smith's finest achievement, this book feels more authentically Soviet with real Russian people living through real Soviet times, rather than the 2D stereotypes we got used to in so many other novels of the same period.
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