Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

~About the Author~ Tom Rob Smith is an English writer who grew up in London where he still lives. He graduated from Cambridge University in 2001 and continued studying creative writing in Italy before beginning work as a scriptwriter. Smith has also written his follow up to Child 44, The Secret Speech which was published in April 2009. ~Background & Accolades~ This is Smith's first novel which was published in 2008 and quickly translated into 17 languages spurred on by its runaway success. Child 44 was awarded the 2008 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best Thriller of the year and it was recently a Barnes and Noble recommended book. The book was ...  Read the complete review

The stunning debut novel from author Tom Rob Smith, who has just recently had his follow-up novel, The Secret Speech, released in this country, Child 44 is a political thriller with a difference. It follows the investigation by MGB Officer, Leo Demidov into a series of child murders committed in a country where crime does not officially exist. It is the late '50's in Soviet Russia, at the end of Stalin's reign, and everyone is encouraged to believe in and propogate the myth that they are living in the perfect model society. This, even as innocent people are everyday snatched from the streets and forced to confess their anti-communist intentions on the flimsiest of ...  Read the complete review

Child 44 though fictional gives both an informative and thrilling account of Stalinist Russia. The author notes in the questions put to him at the end of the novel that the book was based on real events but the protaganists and timescale of the actual event moved around. Child 44 is the story of Leo Demidov who works for the Soviet secret service as a special agent. At the beginning of the novel Leo feels that his work is undertaken for the good of the country and it is the 'right'thing to do even though it requires arresting, torturing and killing countless numbers of people. Leo admits at the beginning of the novel that he has no real evidence these people ...  Read the complete review

When I received this book, I'd heard a lot of good things about it so I was a bit worried it wouldn't live up to the hype. I read the blurb on the back and inwardly groaned because the setting, Communist Russia, seemed all-encompassing and of major importance and I'm not big on politics and political fiction. But I decided to give it a go and see how I got on. Within a few pages, I was hooked. While the political and historical setting WAS important, it wasn't THE most important thing - the story revolved about the "little people", the man on the street and how his day-to-day life (and often death) was affected by the political decision-makers. Tales ...  Read the complete review

The dark reign of communist terror inflicted by Stalin is conveyed from the instant. Tom Rob Smith's debut was captivating from the start, instantly planting your feet firmly in the wintery trenches of the depraved, hungry and desperate life of a Soviet Union citizen. Leo Demidov is an MGB officer whose dedication and ambition to the perfect proletariat society is unquestionable. However, with his power he faces tough decisions and when assigned to the task of investigating his wife Raisa, his unwavering allegiance to the party takes a stumble. Coupled with his impossible suspicions of a serial killer on the loose in a so called crimeless society, he is faced with a ...  Read the complete review