Product Description

In Stalin's Soviet Union, crime does not exist. But still millions live in fear. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the State, the wrong word at the wrong time, can send an innocent person to his execution. Officer Leo Demidov, an idealistic war hero, believes he's building a perfect society. But after witnessing the interrogation of an innocent man, his loyalty begins to waver, and when ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa, Leo is forced to choose where his heart truly lies. Then the impossible happens. A murderer is on the loose, killing at will, and every belief Leo has ever held is shattered. Denounced by his enemies and exiled from home, with only Raisa by his side, he must risk everything to find a criminal that the State won't admit even exists. On the run, Leo soon discovers the danger isn't from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is trying to protect.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #341 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.com

About the Author ~ Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith was born in l979 to a Swedish mother and an English father and was brought up in London where he still lives. He graduated from Cambridge in 2001 and spent a year in Italy on a creative writing scholarship. Tom has worked as a screenwriter for the past five years, including a six-month stint in Phnom Penh storylining Cambodia's first ever soap. .

Exclusive Amazon.co.uk Interview with Tom Rob Smith

What is Child 44 about?

Child 44 is a thriller set in the terror of 1950s Stalinist Russia, a brutal regime that executed anyone who disagreed with its dogma. It proclaimed to be a perfect society. So, when a series of brutal murders take place, no one is permitted to say that these are the work of a serial killer. In a perfect society there can be no crime.

One man, Leo Demidov, a State security agent, a man who has spent his entire career arresting innocent men and women, decides to redeem himself by catching this killer. To do so, he must buck the system, risking his life and the life of everyone he loves.

What inspired you to write it?

It was inspired by a true story, a killer called Andrei Chikatilo who murdered over sixty children, girls, boys, over a period of ten years. Reading about the case I realized this wasn’t a criminal mastermind who’d evaded capture through devious skill. He’d gone on killing for so long because the system refused to admit he even existed. He should’ve been caught on numerous occasions but the prejudices of the State got in the way and, as a result, tragically, many children died. I felt such a tremendous sense of frustration reading about the events that I saw its potential as a piece of fiction.

The real killer murdered in the 1980s. In Child 44 I moved the story back to the 1950s, when the stakes were much higher for someone who dared to risk opposing the State.

Who are your literary influences?

In one sense, any book that I’ve ever read, good or bad.

To answer the question more usefully authors who have directly influenced Child 44 are Graham Greene, Robert Louis Stephenson, Thomas Harris and Arthur Conan-Doyle. Child 44 is as much an adventure as it is a detective story.

If you could recommend just one "must-read book" to anyone, what would it be and why?

There are so many wonderful books. However, connecting to Child 44, I’d say The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Whenever I’ve mentioned the book to people who haven’t read it, they understandably presume it to be melancholy. Much of it is brutal but he is also brilliantly witty, slicing up the absurdities of the regime. It’s an incredible book – or, rather, three books, but there is an abridged edition published by Harvill.

What top tips do you have for anyone looking to write their first book?

There’s a lot of advice already out there. One issue is being able to recognize which advice is good and which is bad, advice that works for one person, might prove disastrous for someone else.

Amazon.co.uk
With so many new books in the crime and thriller field vying for our attention, alert readers need all the help they can get. In the case of Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, the numerous glowing reviews were preceded by a lively word of mouth on the book. The latter can often be misleading, but not in this case -- this is a very exciting debut. It is set in the Soviet Union and in the year 1953; Stalin's reign of terror is at its height, and those who stand up against the might of the state vanish into the labour camps – or vanish altogether. With this background, it is an audacious move on Tom Rob Smith’s part to put his hero right at the heart of this hideous regime, as an officer in no less than the brutal Ministry State Security.

Leo Demidov is, basically, an instrument of the state -- by no means a villain, but one who tries to look not too closely into the repressive work he does. His superiors remind him that there is no crime in Soviet Union, and he is somehow able to maintain its fiction in his mind even as he tracks down and punishes the miscreants. The body of a young boy is found on railway tracks in Moscow, and Demidov is quickly informed that there is nothing to the case. He quickly realises that something unpleasant is being covered over here, but is forced to obey his orders. However, things begin to quickly unravel, and this ex-hero of state suddenly finds himself in disgrace, exiled with his wife Raisa to a town in the Ural Mountains. And things will get worse for him -- not only the murder of another child, but even the life and safety of his wife.

Tom Rob Smith’s beleaguered hero is a protagonist who we know will (at some point) have to rebel against the totalitarian state he works for. But it is the suspense of waiting for this moment as much as the exigencies of the thriller plot that makes this such a compelling novel. --Barry Forshaw

Lee Child
"An amazing debut - rich, different, fully-formed, mature ... and thrilling."

Customer Reviews

A Decent Thriller
The book begins very promisingly with the first chapter detailing the lives of a village on the brink of starvation in 1930s Russia. Two boys from one family go out hunting for the only piece of meat seen in the village for a long time - a cat. However, only one of the boys returned. The other has been killed.

The rest of the book is set in post-Second World War Russia where a young MGB, Leo, is hard at work doing the dirty work of the state until he is asked to deal with a colleague who suspects that his son has been murdered. There are no murders, in Soviet Russia as murders only happen in capitalist countries, so it is recorded as an accident on a railway line and Leo suggests that his colleague accepts the result. However, a series of similar child murders and a jealous rival mean that Leo's faith in the system is shattered through a series of unfortunate events. The rest of the book follows Leo's attempts to catch the murderer in a state that doesn't accept that murders can take place.

Overall, the novel is ok and deserves 4 stars. It is fast-paced and kept me engaged, without being ground breaking, from beginning to end. The ending is where I have an issue with the book. I overlooked the naivety of Leo, who as a seasoned MGB officer gets himself into some serious pickles, as it is a means to an end of keeping the story going. However, the ending is so unlikely it verges on the farcical. The series of events that combine to create the ending could and would never happen, regardless of the country that the book is set in. For this very reason, I have given the book 3 stars instead of the four I would have given it.

superb thriller debut
I was amazed to see that this is the author's debut novel - the writing is very assured, and you know you're in the hands of a craftsman from the start.
The paranoid, shabby setting of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, still under Stalin's rule and still shadowed by the war, is beautifully done - as is the characterisation, the plotting, the sheer grip of the story.
Secret policeman and war hero Leo Demidov is Soviet Man incarnate - unswervingly loyal and unquestioning in his pursuit of the State's enemies - until a powerplay by a jealous subordinate threatens his life, and that of Raisa, his wife.
Thrown out of the MGB in disgrace and exiled to a bleak factory city in the Urals, Leo's world and beliefs are turned upside down. Then he discovers that in the Communist paradise that denies that crime is possible, there exists the worst criminal of all - a serial killer of children. He and Raisa must risk everything to pursue a terrifying killer, even if doing so makes them enemies of the State...

I understand that the author has written screenplays, and this thriller has a cinematic edge and suspense, wrapped up in very fine writing - it's one of the best I've read, and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you love thrillers, you won't be disappointed.

An Excellent Debut!
In his first time at bat, Smith has hit a home run with Child 44. The plot is riveting, the prose is spot on, the narrative is engrossing, and the characters are fully developed. Smith weaves his tale in such a way that I, as the reader, felt I was right in the middle of all the action with the main characters. Basically, Child 44 is the story of Leo Demidov, a rising prominent officer in Stalin's Soviet Union State Security force during the 1950's. Demidov is a former war hero whose only ambition is to serve his country, to defend the worker's paradise, and to guarantee a secure life for his parents and for his wife. Ideological crimes -- crimes of disloyalty, crimes of thought and crimes against the revolution -- are forcefully suprressed without question. And then the impossible happens; in that a different kind of criminal -- a murderer -- is on the loose, killing at will. At the same time Leo finds himself demoted and denounced by his enemies. The only way for Leo to save himself and his family is to uncover this criminal. From this point on be ready to be unable to get up from your chair until you finish this exciting, extremely well-written story (which is based on fact). If you pay careful attention to the early details in Child 44, I think you will (as I did) be able to guess who the murderer is in advance of the ending. This, however, does not detract from the riveting reading experience that Smith has provided in his debut thriller. Child 44 is one of the best books I've read in a while and I highly recommend it to you. Enjoy!