Earlier today, I saw that the writer Martin Cruz Smith has died.  He was 82 years old and was best known for a series of detective novels about Arkady Renko, a Russian police detective.  Starting with 1981’s Gorky Park, Smith’s novels not only dealt with Renko’s adventures but also provided a look at contemporary Russia, as it went from being controlled by the communists to being controlled by Putin.  Renko was a cynical observer whose cases often exposed the corruption of the Russian elite, regardless of who was in charge.

The first of Smith’s Renko novels was turned into a movie in 1983.  Gorky Park stars William Hurt as Renko.  Renko investigates the discovery of three dead bodies at a ice skating rink in Moscow.  One of the victims in an American whose brother (Brian Dennehy) is a tough New York cop who has come to Russia to investigate his disappearance.  Renko’s investigation leads him to an American businessman (Lee Marvin) who is smuggling sables out of Russia and who is also a KGB asset.  Joanna Pacula plays a woman whose hope to escape from Russia leads to her getting caught up in the murders and the subsequent investigation.

Gorky Park‘s mystery is easily solved.  Just by casting Lee Marvin in the role, it is automatically clear who is responsible for the murders and it doesn’t take long for Renko to figure it out either.  Instead, the movie is about how Renko’s investigation exposes the corruption of the Russian state, with the KGB first protecting Lee Marvin’s businessman when he’s considered to be an asset and then expecting Renko to assassinate him once it becomes obvious that his activities are becoming a liability.  The subdued William Hurt and the brash Brian Dennehy make for an compelling investigative team while the underappreciated Joanna Pacula gives an outstanding performance as a woman who is so desperate to escape the oppression of the Soviet Union that she’ll risk everything.  (Even though the murderer is an American businessman, the Soviet Union still banned Gorky Park as both a book and a film.)  Gorky Park’s snowy cinematography and Michael Apted’s measured direction captures the chilly paranoia of Smith’s story and the bleak depiction of a society where national pride mixes with healthy a dose of fear.

Upon release, Gorky Park was a box office disappointment, which meant that there would be no further adventures of William Hurt’s Renko on the big screen.  Martin Cruz Smith continued to write, ultimately publishing ten novels about his unconventional hero.