Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.

                Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.

This was Smith's debut novel, the first of a trilogy featuring former MGB Agent Leo Demidov set in Stalin's Soviet Russia. Imagine a combination of Gorky Park, Silence of the Lambs with Kafka. The novel was inspired by crimes committed by Anderi Chikatilo also known as the Rostor Ripper alias the Butcher of Rostor or even the Red Ripper. He committed 52 murders in the Soviet Union during the 70s and 80s. The state initially refused to admit he existed although he was eventually caught and executed.

"Yesterday I was asked to denounce Raisa. My superior officers believe she's a traitor. They believe she's a spy working for a foreign agency."

Leo was a Stalinist secret policeman interrogating and torturing citizens. A senior apparatchik or a grim reaper perhaps? The MGB was an omnipresent secret police, a forerunner of the infamous KGB. Leo was part of this brutality having ordered the execution of thousands of his countrymen. It's a totalitarian world full of mistrust, a society dominated by lies, secrecy, corruption, cruelty and double standards. Those who were lucky to survive execution found themselves dispatched to the gulags, forced labour camps. Under Stalin millions of prisoners died in these camps from starvation and maltreatment.

Raisa is Leo's wife, 27, beautiful and a school teacher. She married Leo out of fear not out of love. Her parents had been killed and her village wiped out during the Great Patriotic War. An executed spy called Brodsky who was really a vet had named Raisa although Leo firmly believed that the confession was a lie.

"I know my wife is innocent. The whole thing is an act of revenge."

He knows that if he doesn't denounce his wife he will most probably be arrested along with his own parents. His refusal meant that he was reassigned which meant a demotion and exile to the Urals. The death of Stalin had caused some chaos and uncertainty and Leo in effect, escaped with his life. His second in command was a ruthless man called Vasili who had despised Leo. He had even denounced his only brother. His hatred of Leo was personal, motivated possibly by professional jealousy or by raw ambition. For Leo and Raisa it is all about survival once they become fugitives, hunted by the secret police, enemies of the state.

Communist Russia had tried to claim that there was no crime in its Utopian society. The story begins in 1933 before quickly skipping twenty years. We begin in the Ukraine before the action moves to Moscow. A young boy called Arkady Fyodorovich is mowed down by a train, a tragic accident. Fyodor, his father was a low ranking member of the MGB, one of Leo's subordinates. He believed his son had been murdered. The boy's mouth had been stuffed with dirt and he had been left naked. Leo's role here was to confront the family and persuade them that the boy had been accidentally killed. The State worried that "The groundless chatter about murder could grow like a weed, spreading through the community, unsettling people, making them question one of the fundamental pillars of their new society."

In the Urals Leo was handed a case concerning the death of a child, a young girl who had been badly savaged. He knows that he needs to find some connection between  Arkady's death with this second case and the break-through comes when he discovers a third body. Can he prove that there is a serial killer without endangering his life even further? Can he stop more children from being brutally murdered? It's a race against time. Full of tension. Leo undergoes a Damascene conversion and becomes determined to find the killer before the secret police hunt him down and execute him. Well worth a read. One of my must read books when you get the chance. I love this author.

Publisher: Simon and Schuster.  ISBN: 978-1-4711-3347-3.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Copyright 2017. Permission must be obtained from the author before this article review is reproduced.