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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
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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.
