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NEW YORK — Martin Cruz Smith, the best-selling mystery novelist who engaged readers for decades with “Gorky Park” and other thrillers featuring Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, has died at age 82.

Smith died Friday at a senior living community in San Rafael, “surrounded by those he loved,” according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster. Smith revealed a decade ago that he had Parkinson’s disease, and he gave the same condition to his protagonist. His 11th Renko book, “Hotel Ukraine,” was published July 8 and billed as his last.

“My longevity is linked to Arkady’s,” he told Strand Magazine in 2023. “As long as he remains intelligent, humorous, and romantic, so shall I.”

Smith was often praised for his storytelling and for his insights into modern Russia; he would speak of being interrogated at length by customs officials during his many trips there. The Associated Press called “Hotel Ukraine” a “gem” that “upholds Smith’s reputation as a great craftsman of modern detective fiction with his sharply drawn, complex characters and a compelling plot.”

Smith’s honors included being named a “grand master” by the Mystery Writers of America, winning the Hammett Prize for “Havana Bay” and a Gold Dagger award for “Gorky Park.”

Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pa. , he studied creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and started out as a journalist, including a brief stint at the AP and at the Philadelphia Daily News. Success as an author arrived slowly. He had been a published novelist for more than a decade before he broke through in the early 1980s with “Gorky Park.” His novel came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centered on Renko’s investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were found in the Moscow park that Smith used for the book’s title.

“Gorky Park,” cited by the New York Times as a reminder of “just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be,” topped the Times’ fiction bestseller list and was later made into a movie starring William Hurt.

“Russia is a character in my Renko stories, always,” Smith told Publishers Weekly in 2013. “‘Gorky Park’ may have been one of the first books to take a backdrop and make it into a character. It took me forever to write because of my need to get things right. You’ve got to knock down the issue of ‘Does this guy know what he’s talking about or not?’”

Smith’s other books include science fiction (“The Indians Won”), the Westerns “North to Dakota” and “Ride for Revenge,” and the “Roman Grey” mystery series. Besides “Martin Cruz Smith” — Cruz was his maternal grandmother’s name — he also wrote under the pen names “Nick Carter” and “Simon Quinn.”

Smith’s Renko books were inspired in part by his own travels and he would trace the region’s history over the past 40 years, whether it be the Soviet Union’s collapse (“Red Square”), the rise of Russian oligarchs (“The Siberian Dilemma”) or, in the novel “Wolves Eats Dogs,” the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

By the time he began working on his last novel, Russia had invaded Ukraine. The AP noted in its review of “Hotel Ukraine” that Smith had devised a backstory “pulled straight from recent headlines,” referencing such world leaders as Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin of Russia and former President Joe Biden of the U.S.

Smith is survived by his brother, Jack Smith; his wife, Emily Smith; three children and five grandchildren.

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

The 2025 Emmy nominations are set to be announced on Tuesday morning.

The nominees in two categories — best talk series and reality competition series — will be announced at 7:47 a.m. ET/4:47 a.m. PT on CBS Mornings.

Nominees in other major categories will be revealed via livestream on the Emmys website and TV Academy’s YouTube channel below at 11:30 a.m. ET/8:30 a.m. PT.

The announcement, delivered by actors Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows) and Brenda Song (Running Point) and Television Academy chair Cris Abrego, will take place live from the Wolf Theatre at the Academy’s Saban Media Center.

Leading up to the nominations, The Hollywood Reporter’s executive editor of awards Scott Feinberg has continued to share his forecast for this year’s nominees as he attempts to predict which hopefuls will be selected by the TV Academy, which finished nominations-round voting on June 23. Some of the awards categories featured in Feinberg’s latest assessment include best drama series, best comedy series, best limited or anthology series and best TV movie as well as the acting and supporting acting sections for drama series, comedy series and limited series and TV movie.

At the 2024 Emmys, Hacks took home a surprise best comedy series win, in addition to best actress in a comedy series. The Bear set a new record for most wins in a single season for a comedy with 11, including best lead actor in a comedy series, best supporting actress and best supporting actor, defeating its own tally of 10 wins from 2023. And Shogun collected four wins, including best drama series, best actress in a drama series and best actor. Meanwhile, Baby Reindeer won four awards in the limited series categories.

The 77th Emmy Awards, hosted by Nate Bargatze, will air live Sunday, Sept. 14 at 8:00 p.m. ET / 5:00 p.m. PT on CBS and be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

As the awards ceremony approaches, follow THR’s awards page for the latest Emmy news, analysis, features and more.

The results are in, and the streaming landscape was once again primarily dominated by acquired content in the first half of the year, according to a new report from Nielsen.

The company released a ranking Monday of the Top 20 streaming titles from January to June, ranging from a whopping 25.1B minutes viewed for No. 1 title Bluey to a solid 10.5B for No. 20 South Park. The three streaming-only titles that made the list were Squid Game, Reacher and The Night Agent.

In fact, Squid Game was the only made-for-streaming program that cracked the Top 10, putting up more than 15B minutes viewed in the first half of the year. This is quite impressive, especially given the measurement window. Season 2 of the Netflix series launched just days before the start of the new year and, while it certainly retained momentum into January, this tally is missing some monster viewership from the first few days of availability. Similarly, this measurement is also missing any long-tail viewing for Season 3, which premiered on June 27.

Reacher and The Night Agent weren’t far behind with 13.3B and 12.2B minutes viewed, respectively.

(It’s worth mentioning that, while many of the current series listed are considered acquired programming because they technically air first on a linear channel, they still generate much of their audience from streaming. Shows that have long since ended their run are also considered acquired, even if they can now only be found on streaming.)

Interestingly, Supernatural also made it into the Top 20 at No. 15, surpassing new hits like The White Lotus and stalwarts like Friends. The former CW series racked up 11.9B minutes viewed in the first half of the year for Netflix — a solid indicator that the streamer will renew its license for the series, which seems to be up this year.

While South Park came in last place on the overall list, its placement at all comes at a noteworthy time given that the series has been embroiled in tension (that has included a legal threat) due to its lucrative streaming rights. South Park was caught in uncertainty amid Skydance’s pending acquisition of Comedy Central parent Paramount Global, which co-owns the joint venture behind South Park, South Park Digital Studios, with series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone who run it.

Over on the streaming originals list, Love Island USA once again flexes its popularity, putting up over 5B minutes viewed in the first half of the year. The kicker is that new episodes didn’t premiere until June 3. While Nielsen doesn’t split viewership between seasons, it seems likely that much of this viewing came in June as Season 7 rolled out and began setting audience records for the U.S. iteration.

Speaking of titles with a noticeable presence on the streaming originals list is Stranger Things, which hasn’t debuted any new episodes in three years. The final season is expected to roll out later this year, which indicates that fans are possibly getting an early jump on their rewatch.

See more about the state of streaming in the first half of 2025 below.

“Superman” flexed solid box office muscle in its debut weekend. Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav took an early victory lap over the Man of Steel’s performance, while Rihanna arrived fashionably late to Sunday’s premiere of “Smurfs” with her two young sons in tow.

These stories are included in today’s installment of “Daily Variety,” a new podcast that features conversations with Variety journalists about news, trends and personalities making waves in media and entertainment.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety‘s box office expert, weighs in on “Superman’s” performance and some of the suprising regional trends in its performance.

“The top 10 markets were pretty standard. L.A., New York, Dallas, Chicago and San Francisco were some of the top markets. But when I was looking at the top 10 locations, something that caught my eye was there were two theaters in Florida, one in Orlando and one in Miami, and one theater in Atlanta that cracked the top 10 locations,” Rubin says. “Again, usually [the top 10] are populated by theaters in L.A., New York and Texas. I thought it was interesting that those Southern venues were some of the highest grossing. And so it played pretty evenly across the country.”

Clayton Davis, Variety‘s chief awards editor, offered some last-minute thoughts on what to expect with Tuesday’s Emmy nominations. His biggest burning question is whether Television Academy voters will bestow a nomination on “The Pitt” star Noah Wyle. Wyle grabbed five consective supporting drama actor nominations from 1995 to 1999 for his work on NBC’s “ER.”

“It’s been 26 years since Noah Wyle has gotten any nomination and I think [‘The Pitt’] is such a dark horse to win drama series,” Davis opines.

Marc Malkin, Variety‘s red carpet veteran, offers a zippy “Just for Variety” rundown of “Smurfs” premiere event on the Paramount Pictures lot on a sizzling Sunday in Hollywood. Yes, Rihanna arrived nearly two hours after the screening ended. But she didn’t disappoint with her two young sons in tow and plenty of quips about her experience playing Smurfette.

“This is not just for the kids. I’m a super-fan of Smurfs. I’ve always been a fan. I’m really excited for a new generation of Smurfs fans” to discover the film, the pop superstar tells Variety.

Listen to Daily Variety on iHeartPodcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify and other podcast platforms.

(Pictured: Rihanna at Sunday’s premiere of “The Smurfs”