Acclaimed Gorky Park author Martin Cruz Smith dies
Smith died on Friday "surrounded by those he loved," according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster. Further details were not immediately available, but Smith revealed a decade ago that he had Parkinson's disease, and he gave the same condition to his protagonist.
His 11th and final Renko book, Hotel Ukraine, will be published this week.
Among Smith's honours were being named a "grand master" by the Mystery Writers of America, and winning the Hammett Prize for Havana Bay and a Gold Dagger award for Gorky Park.
He had been a published novelist for more than a decade before he broke through in the early 1980s with Gorky Park. His book came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centred on Renko's investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were found in the Moscow park cited in the title.
Gorky Park, praised as a compelling and informative take on the inner workings of the Soviet Union, topped The New York Times' fiction bestseller list and was later made into a movie starring William Hurt.
"Gorky Park is a police procedural of uncommon excellence," Peter Andrews wrote in the Times in 1981.
"Martin Cruz Smith has managed to combine the gritty atmosphere of a Moscow police squad room with a story of detection as neatly done as any English manor-house puzzlement. I have no idea as to the accuracy of Mr Smith's descriptions of Russian police operations. But they ring as true as crystal."
Smith's other books include science fiction (The Indians Won), the Westerns North to Dakota and Ride to Revenge, and the Romano Grey mystery series. Besides Martin Cruz Smith - Cruz was his maternal grandmother's name - he also wrote under the pen names Nick Carter and Simon Quinn.
Smith's Renko books were inspired in part by his own travels in the Soviet Union and he would trace the region's history over the past 40 years, whether the Soviet Union's collapse (Red Square), war in Chechnya (Tatiana), or the rise of Russian oligarchs (The Siberian Dilemma).
Martin Cruz Smith, the best-selling mystery novelist who engaged readers for decades with Gorky Park and other thrillers featuring Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, has died aged 82.
Smith died on Friday "surrounded by those he loved," according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster. Further details were not immediately available, but Smith revealed a decade ago that he had Parkinson's disease, and he gave the same condition to his protagonist.
His 11th and final Renko book, Hotel Ukraine, will be published this week.
Among Smith's honours were being named a "grand master" by the Mystery Writers of America, and winning the Hammett Prize for Havana Bay and a Gold Dagger award for Gorky Park.
He had been a published novelist for more than a decade before he broke through in the early 1980s with Gorky Park. His book came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centred on Renko's investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were found in the Moscow park cited in the title.
Gorky Park, praised as a compelling and informative take on the inner workings of the Soviet Union, topped The New York Times' fiction bestseller list and was later made into a movie starring William Hurt.
"Gorky Park is a police procedural of uncommon excellence," Peter Andrews wrote in the Times in 1981.
"Martin Cruz Smith has managed to combine the gritty atmosphere of a Moscow police squad room with a story of detection as neatly done as any English manor-house puzzlement. I have no idea as to the accuracy of Mr Smith's descriptions of Russian police operations. But they ring as true as crystal."
Smith's other books include science fiction (The Indians Won), the Westerns North to Dakota and Ride to Revenge, and the Romano Grey mystery series. Besides Martin Cruz Smith - Cruz was his maternal grandmother's name - he also wrote under the pen names Nick Carter and Simon Quinn.
Smith's Renko books were inspired in part by his own travels in the Soviet Union and he would trace the region's history over the past 40 years, whether the Soviet Union's collapse (Red Square), war in Chechnya (Tatiana), or the rise of Russian oligarchs (The Siberian Dilemma).
Martin Cruz Smith, the best-selling mystery novelist who engaged readers for decades with Gorky Park and other thrillers featuring Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, has died aged 82.
Smith died on Friday "surrounded by those he loved," according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster. Further details were not immediately available, but Smith revealed a decade ago that he had Parkinson's disease, and he gave the same condition to his protagonist.
His 11th and final Renko book, Hotel Ukraine, will be published this week.
Among Smith's honours were being named a "grand master" by the Mystery Writers of America, and winning the Hammett Prize for Havana Bay and a Gold Dagger award for Gorky Park.
He had been a published novelist for more than a decade before he broke through in the early 1980s with Gorky Park. His book came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centred on Renko's investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were found in the Moscow park cited in the title.
Gorky Park, praised as a compelling and informative take on the inner workings of the Soviet Union, topped The New York Times' fiction bestseller list and was later made into a movie starring William Hurt.
"Gorky Park is a police procedural of uncommon excellence," Peter Andrews wrote in the Times in 1981.
"Martin Cruz Smith has managed to combine the gritty atmosphere of a Moscow police squad room with a story of detection as neatly done as any English manor-house puzzlement. I have no idea as to the accuracy of Mr Smith's descriptions of Russian police operations. But they ring as true as crystal."
Smith's other books include science fiction (The Indians Won), the Westerns North to Dakota and Ride to Revenge, and the Romano Grey mystery series. Besides Martin Cruz Smith - Cruz was his maternal grandmother's name - he also wrote under the pen names Nick Carter and Simon Quinn.
Smith's Renko books were inspired in part by his own travels in the Soviet Union and he would trace the region's history over the past 40 years, whether the Soviet Union's collapse (Red Square), war in Chechnya (Tatiana), or the rise of Russian oligarchs (The Siberian Dilemma).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
9 hours ago
- ABC News
Class action planned over alleged 'serious physical abuse' at Hobart's St Virgil's College in the 1970s and 80s
When Simon* was a student at a Catholic boys' school in Hobart in the 1970s, he says the school was run in an "archaic, cruel" manner. He said one of the teachers had a name for the strap that he would use to hit students. "He used to call it Horace, and he used to have a little rhyme he used to recite as he strapped you," Simon said. "It used to be: 'Horace hit his head with a hard, hard hammer and it hurt horribly'. "And he'd just go faster and faster and faster, and harder, until he'd just lose his way and then he'd give up." The school was St Virgil's College, which, until the late 1980s or early 1990s, was run by the Christian Brothers. "It was almost like every day they were trying to find excuses to strap people, to have their own little moment." During a civil trial in the Supreme Court in Hobart in March, another man alleged he was sexually and physically abused while a student at St Virgil's in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Christian Brothers offered a settlement part way through the trial, which was accepted by the man, and the trial was aborted. Several former St Virgil's students gave evidence during the trial about alleged harsh corporal punishment at the school at the time. The man's lawyer, Bruce McTaggart SC, also told the court of a "culture of fear" at the school at the time. He told the court St Virgil's had a room known among students and staff as the "crying room", where corporal punishment was administered. Lawyer Angela Sdrinis, director of Angela Sdrinis Legal, said that after the trial, several former students who had either experienced or witnessed alleged serious physical abuse sought advice about whether they might also have a viable claim against the Christian Brothers. "As a result of all of that and further people coming forward, we are looking at pursuing a class action in relation to the physical abuse which allegedly occurred at the school," Ms Sdrinis said. It is expected that a class action would include allegations from the 1970s and 1980s. Solicitor at Angela Sdrinis Legal, Ellen FitzGerald, said the Christian Brothers started to leave the school, or were pulled out, towards the late 1980s, "and things seemed to have improved". "But certainly the culture was one of violence and fear from at least the 60s onwards," Ms FitzGerald said. So far, 10 people, including Simon, have come forward with allegations. "We're collecting records, we've got a team of barristers who we've retained to work on the class action," Ms Sdrinis said. "There's a bit more information that we need to obtain, but other than that, we should be ready to go potentially by the end of the year, but certainly early next year." The action would be filed with the Supreme Court in Hobart. Simon said the corporal punishment he was subjected to affected his education and his career trajectory. "I was a very astute, academic-type student right through my early years, right from year 9 and going into year 10, [I] wanted to be an engineer, already planning university, my parents were already putting plans into place for that because my dad was very proud of wanting me to go to uni," he said. But he said the way he was treated led to a strong dislike of his teachers and, ultimately, to him losing interest in his schooling. "When it culminated in me getting expelled in year 11, I just fell out of school and ended up going through the trade lines for many years," he said. Later in life, Simon went to university and earned a diploma and then a bachelor's degree. He said he wanted the Christian Brothers organisation held accountable for the actions of some of their brothers and the lay teachers they employed, many of whom have since died. "The majority of these people are not able to be personally reprimanded for their actions, but they were operating under the umbrella of the Christian Brothers. "So, that umbrella ultimately has the responsibility for their actions … I want the general public to know what a lot of students, as well as myself, went through for this period and how it affected us. Simon said he was also speaking out on behalf of others who were not able to. "I've spoken to two past students in particular who I knew were treated much worse than I and, as much as they would like to come forward, they just can't because their mind is so traumatised by it all, they just can't re-live it." In 2018, Tasmania removed the time limit for bringing claims of child sexual abuse or "serious" physical abuse of a child. "It will be about this distinction between physical abuse and serious physical abuse," Ms Sdrinis said. The ABC asked the Christian Brothers Oceania Province if it wished to make any comment about "allegations of serious physical abuse relating to corporal punishment at [St Virgil's] in the 1970s and 80s". A spokesperson said: "The Christian Brothers Oceania Province has not been provided with any specific detail of what is alleged except that no claim has been filed with any court, and consequently, we are unable to comment." *Name has been changed.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
A powerful, razor-sharp culinary and coming-of-age memoir
MEMOIR Hunger Like a Thirst Besha Rodell Hardie Grant, $35 There is a lot to learn from this book. Besha Rodell has led a pretty fractured life. As a child in the 1980s, she lived in a tumbledown house in Melbourne's Brunswick with her father, a historian and former minister, and her American mother, the daughter of a Hollywood scriptwriter. Her mother started having affairs and her father moved into another house, sharing with the man who was to become Besha's stepfather. Before long, Besha's life was divided between the USA and Australia. Within the states, she was a nomad, circulating around North Carolina, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Colorado and other places. She found jobs in restaurant kitchens and began working obscene hours with curious colleagues. The restaurant industry hardly leaves time for its practitioners to eat. Part of this razor-sharp memoir campaigns for change in the destructive habits of a trade whose virtues Rodell fully appreciates. Yet, many cafes eat their staff. Rodell shares her story with brio, and it is a dizzying sequence of events. She has so many unforgettable experiences that she can hardly remember them all. She and her partner, Ryan, and before long their child, Felix, sail close to the wind financially. Eventually, Rodell found her way into reviewing restaurants and, for many years, this has been her stock-in-trade; at present, she's the chief restaurant critic for The Age. As she starts to unpack the intricacies and demands of writing about food with integrity, Hunger Like a Thirst becomes a sorbet in a culture that is so spiced with hype that it has no flavour of its own. Rodell has worked against the tide in a world where influencers and other minor celebrities are cajoled into providing all the flattery any business could want. If you have posted even lukewarm reviews of restaurants, you may know what it is like to be contacted by the establishment and offered inducements to change your tune. Whom can you trust? She has her roots in an earlier time, when reviewing was a form of genuine engagement, not mindless barracking. She inherited excellent rules from a gentleman called Craig Claiborne who became the food critic of The New York Times in 1957. Claiborne was a pioneer in several ways, not least in establishing a food section of the paper that dealt with more than domestic housekeeping. His rules could well be adapted to reviewing anything, from books to cruises. They advocate a standard of consistency and objectivity. Weekly reviews should be done by the same person. The reviewer will dine anonymously. The reviewer will visit the restaurant at least three times, eat widely from the menu and order some dishes more than once. Absolutely no freebies of any kind.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
A powerful, razor-sharp culinary and coming-of-age memoir
MEMOIR Hunger Like a Thirst Besha Rodell Hardie Grant, $35 There is a lot to learn from this book. Besha Rodell has led a pretty fractured life. As a child in the 1980s, she lived in a tumbledown house in Melbourne's Brunswick with her father, a historian and former minister, and her American mother, the daughter of a Hollywood scriptwriter. Her mother started having affairs and her father moved into another house, sharing with the man who was to become Besha's stepfather. Before long, Besha's life was divided between the USA and Australia. Within the states, she was a nomad, circulating around North Carolina, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Colorado and other places. She found jobs in restaurant kitchens and began working obscene hours with curious colleagues. The restaurant industry hardly leaves time for its practitioners to eat. Part of this razor-sharp memoir campaigns for change in the destructive habits of a trade whose virtues Rodell fully appreciates. Yet, many cafes eat their staff. Rodell shares her story with brio, and it is a dizzying sequence of events. She has so many unforgettable experiences that she can hardly remember them all. She and her partner, Ryan, and before long their child, Felix, sail close to the wind financially. Eventually, Rodell found her way into reviewing restaurants and, for many years, this has been her stock-in-trade; at present, she's the chief restaurant critic for The Age. As she starts to unpack the intricacies and demands of writing about food with integrity, Hunger Like a Thirst becomes a sorbet in a culture that is so spiced with hype that it has no flavour of its own. Rodell has worked against the tide in a world where influencers and other minor celebrities are cajoled into providing all the flattery any business could want. If you have posted even lukewarm reviews of restaurants, you may know what it is like to be contacted by the establishment and offered inducements to change your tune. Whom can you trust? She has her roots in an earlier time, when reviewing was a form of genuine engagement, not mindless barracking. She inherited excellent rules from a gentleman called Craig Claiborne who became the food critic of The New York Times in 1957. Claiborne was a pioneer in several ways, not least in establishing a food section of the paper that dealt with more than domestic housekeeping. His rules could well be adapted to reviewing anything, from books to cruises. They advocate a standard of consistency and objectivity. Weekly reviews should be done by the same person. The reviewer will dine anonymously. The reviewer will visit the restaurant at least three times, eat widely from the menu and order some dishes more than once. Absolutely no freebies of any kind.
