He passed away on July 11, but I have just now learned about it. I first encountered him through his novel Gorky Park (1981), which hit the bestseller list and was promptly turned into a film starring William Hurt and Brian Dennehy.
Smith continued to write novels, including ten more with the hero of Gorky Park, Arkado Renko, up to this year with Hotel Ukraine. I’m sorry to say I haven’t read any of his other novels.
Someone must have it in for political thriller authors. First Frederick Forsyth and now Martin Cruz Smith.
I read “Nightwing,” and I know I saw the movie, but I have absolutely no memory of the movie!
That’s a real shame, I really enjoyed the Renko novels. He had a real gift for noir, both in terms of the bleak humour of Renko’s internal monologue, and for creating believable mean streets down which his man must walk. Of course, the decaying/collapsing/semi-resurgent USSR/Russia made for a fantastic noir setting - corruption, shadowy power, moral compromise - all an excellent backdrop to what were generally pretty tight plots.
Latterly, both the length and quality of the books dropped off, something explained by the last novel being partly an exploration of Renko’s newly diagnosed Parkinson’s Disease, whcih an endnote explained mirrored the author’s experience. I can only assume this was the cause of death.
But in fact my favourite of his novels was Rose, which is set in the English mining town of Wigan during the industrial revolution and concerns an American raised mining engineer, career in disgrace, blundering around unfamiliar territory trying to locate a missing curate. The atmosphere, the mystery and love story are all really well done, as are the occasional bleak vignettes about British colonialism after the cessation of the slave trade.
I loved Gorky Park, book and movie.
At the time the movie came out, I worked in an office with several other book lovers, and all of us read the book at the same time. It wasn’t an intentional book club. We just did stuff like that. It was an unusual group of people…
Sounds intriguing. I’ll give this one a look. 
That’s a real loss. His book Polar Star was based on a Russian boat that I was on (Sulak).
I didn’t know any of his books besides Gorky Park were made into movies. Have to check them out.