::READERS REVIEWS::

Gorky Park - The cassettes were in good condition, which is a real help for me and my old car. The story is fascinating for a couple different reasons. It's a mystery/thriller starting out with lots of gore in the park and continues with lots of plot twists and turns. Secondy, it's set in the last days of the old Soviet Union. I've only been to the USSR once, but the corruption nad double-tripple-quadrupale standard the story describes coincides with my limited knowledge of what it was really like. I sometimes had a problem keeping up with the plot twists and the names.

Life and Fate in the 70s - Martin Cruz Smith's GORKY PARK is the height of pulp fiction during the early 1980s. It combines page turning with a detailed look at Russia's disfunctional society in the 70s. Smith has the ability to describe the ugliness, decadence, and despeartion of a country and a people that has lost all hope. Where there is no eschatology,
the harshness of life strips all brightness from life, even the blood as Smith describes it, appears colorless.
Arkady Renko fights through that meaningless. Meaning to him is solving the crime, even if that means
the loss of all personal privilege.

Loved the details of the descriptions of life in the Soviet Union. Couldn't stop reading. - This 1981 crime novel is the first in a series highlighting the Soviet detective, Arkady Renko. These books have become very popular but I usually resist these plot-driven police procedurals. They tend to feature a horrendous crime and the whole book is about following the clues as the story unfolds to a satisfactory conclusion. This is true of this book too but I must say that there was something special about it that kept me reading and kept me fascinated. It was set in the Soviet Union and I was absolutely mesmerized by the details of a way of life that I have only heard rumors about. I felt it all as I read the book - the cold of the Russian winters, the intrinsic corruption, the taking for granted of the purges that sent thousands of people to Siberia, the acceptance of a lifestyle that includes drinking copious amounts of vodka to ease the hundreds of inconveniences and general dismay of everyday life.

The story starts with the discovery of three unidentified bodies in Gorky Park in Moscow. It unravels slowly as Arlady Renko has to deal with the politics of the times and the monolithic character of the Soviet Union. There is the dissolution of Renkos marriage followed by a serious love affair with a young woman from Siberia who is loosely connected with the three murdered individuals We also meet a wealthy corrupt American in the fur trade as well as numerous civil servants, investigators, gangsters, and friends who all wind up brutally murdered. Arkady himself survives beatings and gunshots and internment in an institution where he is interrogated constantly. There is also a final section that takes place in New York City and I found myself indentifying with the time and the place in a city I know so well. Renko might be a caricature but I couldn't help but like him as he remains strong in the face of adversity and naturally lives through it all to become the hero of a very successful line of books that follow.

In spite of my misgivings and my general impatience with the incredulous details of the plot, I couldn't put the book down and quickly discovered why a book like this is so popular. It's because the reader gets so caught up in the plot that it becomes a little vacation from the reality of the everyday life and lets a person indentify with the heroism of the lead character.

I therefore have to highly recommend this book although I seriously doubt if I'll read any more in the series.

very intriguing work - Sometimes when one picks up a book of this genre the cliches and nuances become almost nauseating; "Gorky Park," however, graciously avoids these labels. Russian-themed and well-researched without having to remind the reader every few lines that the author knows one or two words/phrases in Russian. I highly recommend this work. Yes, it is a fluff read, but it is on the more intellectually stimulating side of that category!

Gorky Park - I love to read almost anything pertaining to Russia. This book was fantastic! I have visited Moscow and places and activities mentioned were quite accurate. Especially the KGB running the tour buses and hidden microphones/cameras in hotel rooms and other places frequented by visitors. Get it....Read it....now!

Entertaining Read - A detailed, well-written murder mystery set in Russia less than a decade before the fall of the Soviet Union. Murder investigator Arkady Renko is called upon to solve the murder of three faceless victims found in Gorky Park, and along the way he battles people trying to stop the case from being solved, a wife looking for divorce, a bewitching Siberian girl, an American policeman looking for a murderer, and an American salesman somehow involved in the three deaths. Cruz Smith did a good job in describing the Russian people, and he depicts an interesting picture of the Soviet Union that is reminiscent of Orwell's "1984".

Two small issues I had with the story was that I didn't fully understand the prosecutor's reasonings for the conspiracy that unraveled, and I thought the love relationship between Arkady and Irina was rather shallow. Still the story is enjoyable read.