In 1983 a film adaptation of the novel was released starring William Hurt as Arkady, Joanna Pacula as Irina, Lee Marvin as Osborne and Brian Dennehy as Kirwill. Chief Inspector Arkady Renko is tasked with solving the murders of three people found in Gorky Park, their bodies frozen and killed weeks earlier, hidden by the snow. Ice skates found on the woman's body lead Arkady to Irina Asanova, a wardrobe girl at a movie studio, who claims that she reported them stolen, and has no idea how they ended up with the victims. The killer is right about the endemic corruption of the Soviet Union, as an act of betrayal by a long-time friend and mentor very nearly costs Renko his life, and drops him into the clutches of the KGB into the bargain. Smith covers all the bases here; Vodka, Lenin, Stalin, the KGB, the communist party, volgas, this novel lives and breathes Russia.

It’s a fairly improbable premise that begins this farfetched soviet era thriller that finishes with a totally implausible ending. 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.My favorite part of this novel was Cruz Smith's ability to portray the Russian psyche, and there is nothing that does this better than humor and insinuations (that may be lost on those who are not familiar with the Eastern Block machinery-and Cruz Smith, bless his soul, is not explicit-explicating to a "western" audience the intangibles of life beyond the Iron Curtain would only destroy the novel's realism).

Some perspective might have helped (especially for people like me whose knowledge of geography and history is downright-laughable). While the syndrome itself is fictional, the incident also alludes to the very real Soviet practice of diagnosing dissidents with " sluggish schizophrenia", and of forcibly treating them with psychotropic drugs. This novel showed us deep corruption at all levels, like that of the eighties, and it told us: the Powers that Be would soon discretely fold it all up and put it out of harm’s way. Interesting reversal that the main protagonist is a Russian investigator trying to uncover a murder that takes him to the USA, with an unexpected denouement. Martin Cruz Smith's novels include Gorky Park , Stallion Gate , Nightwing , Polar Star , Stalin's Ghost , Rose , December 6 , Tatiana , The Girl from Venice , and The Siberian Dilemma .I always held back from reading Gorky Park -- despite its decades long service as a dust collector on my shelf -- for fear that an American author during the Cold War could only deliver the shabbiest form of propaganda if writing about a Moscow cop circa the early 80s. He finally identified Osborne as his brother's killer, but was overcome by Osborne's attack dogs when he came to confront him. What makes this murder different is that the killer sliced off the faces and fingertips of all three victims – a gruesome extra touch that might make it seem, at first, as though the identities of the murder victims could never be discovered. Was it possible – did he have the imagination – to create some elaborate case full of mysterious foreigners, black marketeers and informers, a whole population of fictitious vapors rising off three corpses? Though I’ve never been to Russia (my only immersion into the culture was the year I spent trying unsuccessfully to learn the language), its image is intricately linked with the glamorous Moscow of the film, The Saint, in my mind’s eye.