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Book Review of Gorky Park (Arkady Renko, Bk 1)

Gorky Park (Arkady Renko, Bk 1)
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Helpful Score: 1


Brilliant Suspense Fiction!, October 7, 2005
Reviewer: Ellie Reasoner (Mason, Ohio, USA)

Gorky Park, the opening book in a (to date) quartet of novels concerning a brilliant, socially disaffected detective from Moscow, is as much a tale of late Soviet life as it is a mystery and thriller. This novel begins after three bodies--two men and a woman, all of them young--are discovered in a melting snowbank outside one of Moscow's most popular theme parks. The bodies have been strategically mutilated so as to prevent identification and, despite any indications of a struggle, all three victims were shot at point blank range with a high powered handgun. From there, not only is identification made in a rather more swift fashion than the calculating killer imagined possible, but a complex plot involving government corruption, political dissidents, and the smuggling of one of the Soviet Union's most valued resources, is exposed. An edge of your seat drama, a sociological case study in dreary Soviet life, and a fine delving into the universal themes of human psychology, all set against the deadly, gripping cold of a Moscow winter. A really great book that starts off a really great series!