VJ Books Features Martin Cruz Smith!

Martin Cruz Smith was born Martin William Smith, but changed his middle name to his grandmother's surname, Cruz. Smith is the son of a white jazz musician and a Pueblo Indian jazz singer. 

His novels include December 6 (2002), Gorky Park (1981), Havana Bay (1999), Nightwing (1997), Polar Star (1989), Red Square (1992) Rose (1996), Stallion Gate (1986), his latest novel--Three Stations (August 2010), Wolves Eat Dogs (2004), and more.  

 

Though he's best known for Gorky Park, now considered a classic in the spy thriller genre, Smith is clearly a writer with more than one trick up his sleeve. "I never thought I would just be doing Arkady books," he once told a Salon interviewer. "I never intended to do any after Gorky Park, so I was pretty amazed when people asked me a few years ago what I was going to do now that the Cold War was over, as if I had been manufacturing missiles. I hate to be categorized. The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself."

 

Smith is a two-time winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers and a recipient of Britain's Golden Dagger Award. He lives in California.