He is best known for his series featuring Russian investigator Arkady Renko, so far ten novels, who was introduced in 1981 with Gorky Park and most recently appeared in Independence Square (2023).

Martin William Smith was born in Reading, Pennsylvania to John Calhoun Smith, jazz musician and Louise Lopez, an American Indian of Pueblo descent, jazz singer, teacher, Amerindian rights militant, and Miss New Mexico in 1939.

Smith's paperback originals included a series about a character named "The Inquisitor", a James Bond-type agent employed by the Vatican; and a science fiction novel, The Indians Won (1970), one of the earliest works of Native American speculative fiction to see wide publication.

The novel, which Time called the "first thriller of the '80s",[8] became a bestseller and won a Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association.

2 position for over three months, beaten only by James Clavell's Noble House, and stayed in the top 15 through November of that year.

[citation needed] During the 1990s, Smith twice won the Dashiell Hammett Award from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers.