Books: A Moral, Exportable Sleuth

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It was a sound prophecy. Gorky Park has already earned $1 million before publication. The income, Smith insists, has made little difference. He has no plans to move from his 41/2-room Manhattan apartment; his daughters, 11 and 9, still go to the same neighborhood school, and his wife Nell remains a part-time chef for a catering service. "The only perceptible changes," he says, "are a new chair without yellow tape to hold the stuffing in —and the fact that we're having another baby. The typewriter is the same, and I'm still learning my craft."

That education began in Philadelphia, where Smith found the rudiments of writing in the work of his parents, both jazz musicians. "I found that you could improvise all you wanted if you had a strong structure."

After graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English, Smith became "the worst correspondent the A.P. ever had. Every time someone held up a pie-shaped chart of the state budget I fell asleep." For the next 15 years, he made his living by writing some 30 inconsequential novels and innumerable short stories under a variety of aliases, including Simon Quinn, Jake Logan and Nick Carter. None bore much resemblance to their originator, an intense longdistance runner whose coloring and physiognomy "display a classic mix of genes —my mother is mostly Pueblo Indian and my father is straight out of an Andy Hardy movie."

Those origins occasionally surface in the Smith oeuvre—one book posits a U.S. in which the Indians beat the Cavalry; others feature a gypsy detective. Ironically, the least autobiographical of his heroes is also the most successful one, possibly because Arkady Renko took eight years to create. "The research in Moscow consumed only two weeks," says Smith. "I applied for a return trip, but the U.S.S.R. refused me. So I turned to the vast resources of New York: scores of emigres and dissidents. I actually found myself with too much information."

Smith is now in the process of collecting data for his next novel, set in the Sunbelt. It is, once again, a thriller. "The format," he feels, "is inexhaustible. We don't need farfetched plots: 'What if the President were a midget and his wife were a man?' All we have to do is ask, 'What if the President were Ronald Reagan? What if the leadership of Russia were over 80?' The drama is there. All we have to do is get it down on paper." ∎