How does one approach a crime novel that was set in Moscow and released in 1981? At the height of American ignorance about what was really going on behind the Iron Curtain, when most of us learned what little we knew about Russians from Rocky and Bullwinkle, Pennsylvania author Martin Cruz Smith wrote Gorky Park, a complicated, intimate crime drama set in the heart of Moscow and involving the militia (Russian police), the KGB, American entrepreneurs and political knife fighting. 

Despite all this, members of the Richmond Heights Memorial Library's Book Club generally thought Smith did rather well during their monthly discussion Oct. 4.

 At first, the depictions of Russian life seem a bit stereotyped and overwhelming. There is political corruption at every level, justice is made a mockery by untouchable bad guys and there are steeply striated and inherently hypocritical social classes. Every poor character runns a side business in some illegal activity or another in order to scrape together enough money to live in tiny, dismal apartments and perpetually drink endless supplies of vodka. 

One could float the Potemkin on this novel’s vodka.

But this obsession with corruption and class sets the stage for what proves to be an engaging mystery featuring intriguing characters. Arkady Renko is the best homicide investigator in Moscow’s militia, which is certain to be his undoing.  He is conflicted, thoughtful, loyally Russian and quietly driven to seek justice in a system that has no use for such ideas. 

The gruesome case on his desk, involving three bodies found frozen in Gorky Park with faces and fingers removed, reminds him of a past case in which KGB men got away with murder, as per norm. Meanwhile, his wife is distracting him with their politically charged divorce.

But the case becomes increasingly complicated as the novel progresses. It involves a host of characters that one would expect from a Russian novel: There is the beautiful ingénue with scars to prove she’s not so innocent; the ingratiating prosecutor who seems to be Arkady’s ally but also moves comfortably among the political sharks; a hardnosed Irish cop from New York; Arkady’s war-hero Stalinist father; a KGB spy in the militiamen ranks; a brilliant forensic reconstructionist; a wealthy American fur merchant; and dozens of minor, corrupt characters along the way.

One book club member pointed out that the novel obsesses, from beginning to end, on money and power. Nearly every character consistently seeks one or the other, almost always by illegal means with a wink and a shrug. The novel is obsessed with social class, with money, with corruption and with the trappings of religion, all in a political climate that denies the presence or importance of any of these things. The crimes are not what they seem, and the actual motivations are hidden behind these obsessions. 

It is a complicated, vicious path that Arkady must walk to get to the truth. This complication of plot has downsides for the reader, including many loose ends that are never explained, much time spent chasing false leads, a cast that is difficult to keep straight because of similar names and motivations, and a sense, at the end, that most of the novel was distraction leading to a rather simple conclusion. 

But the merits of the work still stand and manage to overwhelm the deficits to create a rather good crime novel. Smith has gone on to write seven Arkady Renko novels, the latest of which came out just last year. Many of them did rather well critically and commercially.

Next month, we travel closer to home with a gritty, bleak thriller—Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell—set in the Missouri Ozarks.  See our website, rhml.lib.mo.us, for details. The Richmond Heights Memorial Library Book Club meets the first Tuesday of each month, from 7:30 to 8:30pm, at The Heights community center, 8001 Dale Ave. Please join us!