Martin Cruz Smith, the acclaimed author whose Arkady Renko thrillers captivated readers for decades, has died at the age of 82. His publisher, Simon & Schuster, confirmed he passed away on Friday, "surrounded by those he loved."
Smith had revealed a decade ago that he was living with Parkinson’s disease, a condition he later gave to his iconic Moscow investigator, Arkady Renko. His 11th and final Renko novel, Hotel Ukraine, is set to be published this week, having been praised by The Associated Press as a "gem" that "upholds Smith’s reputation as a great craftsman of modern detective fiction with his sharply drawn, complex characters and a compelling plot."
Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied creative writing. He began his career as a journalist, including a brief stint at the AP, and had been a published novelist for over a decade before achieving widespread recognition with Gorky Park in the early 1980s. The novel, released when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive, centred on Renko’s investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were discovered in the titular Moscow park.
Gorky Park was lauded as a compelling and informative insight into the inner workings of the Soviet Union, topping The New York Times’ fiction bestseller list and later adapted into a film starring William Hurt. Writing in the Times in 1981, Peter Andrews described it as "a police procedural of uncommon excellence". He added: "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."
Beyond the Renko series, Smith’s diverse bibliography included science fiction such as The Indians Won, Westerns like North to Dakota and Ride to Revenge, and the Romano Grey mystery series. He also wrote under the pen names ‘Nick Carter’ and ‘Simon Quinn’, in addition to ‘Martin Cruz Smith’ – Cruz being his maternal grandmother’s name. His Renko novels were partly inspired by his own travels in the Soviet Union, allowing him to trace the region’s history over four decades, from the Soviet Union’s collapse in Red Square to the war in Chechnya in Tatiana, and the rise of Russian oligarchs in The Siberian Dilemma.
Among his many honours, Smith was named a ‘grand master’ by the Mystery Writers of America, and received the Hammett Prize for Havana Bay and a Gold Dagger award for Gorky Park.
The AP noted in its review of Hotel Ukraine that Smith had devised a backstory pulled straight from recent headlines, referencing such world leaders as Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin of Russia and former President Joe Biden of the U.S.
