Everybody plays the fool...sometime.
There's no exception to the rule - listen baby!
It may be factual, it may be cruel...I ain't lying.
Everybody plays the fool.

- AARON NEVILLE

When the lie becomes the truth, when the fool wields all the power, when there are no rules, and exceptions abound....betrayal is around every corner.

It's human nature to act on what you think you know.  We trust in the belief that others operate based on the same set of assumptions.  But life is really just a dance, and some people dance better than others.  They move in the right circles.  They play the game.  They make sure good things happen to them, and if bad things happen to you?  Well, that's how the dice fell.  Nothing to do with them.

Gorky Park can be a profoundly depressing book.  It depicts a world that is not so different from 21st century North America as we might wish to believe.  A world where the ancient good guy - bad guy dichotomy gives way, and we are all revealed for what we truly are.  Survivors.  Just trying to get by.  Damn the consequences.

And yet...there is a strange fascination in watching people squirm.