The first book I read on the trip was Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park, which aims very high, even if it doesn't quite hit its mark. The book is about a Russian detective, Arkady Renko, who gets drawn into a plot to smuggle sables out of Russia and create a new sable industry in the US.
It seems that Smith is aiming for the lofty territory of le Carre, drawing equivalences between Americans and Russians (everyone's after money, loyalties shift very freely, and so on), with a world-weary hero. But Gorky Park doesn't have the moral bite le Carre often has. In le Carre's books, people have principles, and the drama is in how much they'll compromise them, or even undermine them while ostensibly promoting them. For example, the way that a democratic government will try to prop up dictators, or even undermine fledgling democratic movements, if it seems to be in the national interest.
In Gorky Park, so many of the characters are venal, that there's no real tragedy; it becomes a game of watching how the pieces move. As it happens, Smith has put together a fascinating game to watch, and it's an excellent novel, but I kept hoping for just a little bit more.
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