Gorky Park is a 1981 crime novel written by American author Martin Cruz Smith. 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.
Set in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Gorky Park is the first book in a series featuring the character Arkady Renko, a Moscow homicide investigator. Two subsequent books, Polar Star and Red Square, are also set during the Soviet era. Eight further books starring Renko take place after the fall of the Soviet Union. These are Havana Bay, set in communist Cuba; Wolves Eat Dogs, which follows Renko in the disaster of Chernobyl; Stalin’s Ghost, in which Arkady returns to a Russia led by Vladimir Putin; Three Stations; Tatiana; The Siberian Dilemma; Independence Square; and Hotel Ukraine.
Gorky Park was a major best-seller, vaulting Smith to fame after a decade as a moderately successful professional author. The novel was praised for the authenticity with which it depicted life in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was adapted into a successful 1983 film of the same name.
