Martin Cruz Smith, acclaimed author of 'Gorky Park,' dies at 82

His book came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centered 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 and Lee Marvin. 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").