Child 44

Leo Stepanovich Demidov is a member of the MGB, the State Security Force for the Soviet Union and one of MGB's top investigative detectives. When it comes to loyalty, Leo is the most loyalists of men. He serves his country well and for that he is rewarded handsomely. In a country where any talk of disloyalty whether it be from reading a book or talk of being a traitor, can be punishment by death.

Suddenly Leo finds himself in a moral situation. He is put in charge of investigating his wife, Raisa. Accusations have been made against Raisa saying she is a traitor to her country. Leo now has to make a choice whether he turns his wife in like a good agent or stand up for him and his wife. The choice is obvious. Leo gets demoted to the lowest of lows when he is sent away to be part of the militia. His duties now consist of him cleaning prisoner's cells. When the body of a fourteen year old girl is found with her mouth filled with dirt and her intestines ripped out, Leo believes this was no accident but indeed a murder. He starts investigating and what he discovers is more heinous than anything Leo could imagine.

I kept seeing Child 44 showing up everywhere on the web. People were saying good things about this book. I am proud to say I too can't stop saying wonderful things about Child 44. This can only be achieved by an author like Tom Rob Smith. Mr. Rob Smith fused this book with such raw emotions of love, loyalty, loss, and trust. When you take a character like Leo, who experiences all of these emotions at the same time you end up with something truly amazing that will leave readers talking about Child 44 for a long time to come. I know I will. Child 44 is Tom Rob Smith's first novel. He should be proud of it. I give this book five stars and if I could give it more I would. I anxiously await his next novel.

On November 22, 2008 Ukrainians in Kiev, Ukraine marked the anniversary of a 1932 famine, known as Holodomor (Death by Hunger), in which upwards of 3.5 million Ukrainians starved to death. That famine serves as the prologue for Tom Rob Smith's novel "Child 44". In that prologue two young Ukrainian children are sent out by their mother to scavenge for food. The scavenger hunt has terrible consequences for both brothers. The story then jumps ahead twenty years, at the end of Stalin's long reign, and introduces us to State Security Force (MGB) office Leo Demidov. Leo is a war hero and, by all accounts, a dedicated and competent police detective. A child of one of Demidov's colleague is found dead near some railroad tracks. The MGB rules it an accidental death. The family insists it was murder. The rest of the novel takes us on Demidov's reluctant journey, one that convinces him that not only was the child murdered but that the victim was but one of many at the hands of what will later become known as a serial murderer.

The plot develops along two parallel tracks (pun intended): Demidov's investigation and the bureaucratic obstacles placed in the way of that investigation. The MGB and the entire collective weight of the USSR can not nor will acknowledge the existence of a `serial killer'. That is politically and practically impossible in a nation well on its way to being a worker's paradise. Demidov must deal not only with a smart and sociopathic murderer but with a system that will not tolerate the investigation of something that it does not accept can exist.

Child 44 works pretty well. The story, based loosely on the story of the USSR's first acknowledged serial killer, seems to get the atmospherics just right. The bureaucracy and vicious plotting by and among Demidov's colleagues also has a realistic feel. Smith keeps the plot bubbling and manages to reveal just enough detail to keep the reader guessing. Although some elements of the outcome are quite predictable given the book's prologue he does manage to introduce enough twists at the end to make most readers a little surprised by some of the climactic events of the novel.

All in all Child 44 was a satisfying thriller. The writing could have been more polished in places. Sometimes Smith delves into some formulaic descriptions of some characters in the story and sometimes he can present an exciting event in a tone that may be just a bit too breathless. However, since the book is more plot-driven than `literary'-driven I think those minor flaws are easily overlooked. So, four stars for those looking for a thriller with an international flavor.
L. Fleisig

Smith's title was recommended to me by a retired NCO, who like me,is fascinated by the excesses of totalitarian governments. He could not put the book down, he said. Well, I could, having extended family whose ethnic base was murdered off by the millions in the Ukraine. The cleansing of the population went on full bore,and we did not care,because they had no oil we could steal. I took Mr. Smith's tome more personal than a mere work of fiction. Then, there was my mother-in-law, who sent her relatives in Russia packages of army blankets and coffee, as if the commies would not steal whatever they wished and as if our own Uncle Joe McCarthy would not add her to his list as somone else who should be marched off to an American Gulog. But, as the story goes, Leo relentlessly pursed a hideous serial killer of children the state denied existed. And, I will not even mention the fantastic coincidence in the final chapters, or the killer's "motivation." And, then, the book ends happily ever after... Incredible!!! Now, as an allegory, suppose a country suspended its citizens' constitutional rights with some chuckled faced law such as the Patriot Act. Suppose the public is disarmed. Suppose education is taken over by No Child Left Behind nincompoops. Then, how much different will our position be than that of Leo's?

I bought Child 44 based on a review I read in Publishers' Weekly, which was chancy for me because PW and I don't often agree on what's good and what isn't. But Child 44 is brilliant. We don't simply read about the Soviet Union at the end of Stalin's reign; we become IMMERSED in life in late-Stalinist USSR. We feel not only the cold; we feel the constant uncertainty of life; the reality that at any given moment we may be denounced to the powers be by anyone, including our children, and will be sent to one of the prison camps in Siberia where the life expectancy is very, very short. The author's decision to create a main character who works for the agency that is the forerunner of the KGB, to make that character a major player in that agency, and to make him a sympathetic character despite all this was a gutsy, chancy decision, but it works brilliantly.

To discuss the plot in much of any detail would ruin the book for most readers; I will say that I'm old enough to be rather jaded when it comes to suspense/thriller/mystery/horror genres, and very little surprises me -- but this book blew me away. I really thought I had it all "figured out", and as it turned out, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. The ending is stunning, horrifying, and completely unpredictable, but it ties all the different threads of the book together in one shocking moment of frightening realization, and another moment of decision that no matter what the main character does to attempt to resolve the situation, he will be wrong, no matter what that decision is.

Dostoevsky would have loved this, as would Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak, and the novel is of such complexity and drama, as well as unexpected twists, that it will likely be ranked, if not with these Russian literary giants, with important contemporary books about the Soviet Union. I honestly didn't want the book to end and read it straight through.

The writing is good, the author's conceit works, the history is accurate, and we feel the emotions of ALL the characters, not just the protagonist. So we have a good book, a good writer, good writing and accurate history, all mingled with the horrors that only human beings can perpetrate, and one great eclat of realization, a stunning climax, and the weight of its aftermath.

I honestly can't think of a single reason why anyone should NOT read this book. It's wonderful. I hope the author can pull off the same quality and honesty and drama when his next book appears -- which I hope will be soon, but not TOO soon -- the pressure of absurd deadline dates all too often end up making a really good writer churn out novels that aren't worth the reader's time. I really hope he's got a good agent, a good publisher, and a contract that will allow him to write another dazzling book.

So, in a word, READ CHILD 44! And give kudos to Tom Rob Smith for a terrific debut novel that deserves literary awards, whether or not he gets them.

We are not reading Hemingway or Fitzgerald here, or John le Carre -- yet, I have not recently read such memorable scenes and moments in a long time. The writing, his prose, flows but is not stylish or poetic, but it works, obviously. In fact, it seems to work by removing the author completely so that those who remain are vivid because of who they are, not who they have been created by. Congratulations, Tom Rob Smith.Child 44