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Review Date: 1/18/2016
I became interested in this book after seeing the excellent film with Noomi Rapace. I have long been a student of the Red Army and the Eastern Front and bought the book several years ago thinking it had something to do with a Soviet child during The Great Patriotic War. It is something very different--a murder mystery featuring a Staln-era MGB agent and life in postwar USSR.
The film was faithful to the book but had to omit what turned out to be major portions of the original story. I normally watch a film adaptation of a novel after reading the book, but in this case having seen the film first actually added a lot to reading the book.
Child 44 is gritty, violent and sometimes hard to read, but worth it. It has scenes and characters that are now burned into my memory. I knew life under Stalnist Communism was hard, but this book gives me a whole new appreciation of what it must have been like in a world where offending someone or being in the wrong place at the wrong time could result in a knock on the door at 4 am (the arresting time for the MGB, predecessor to the KGB) arrest, torture, transportation in a freight car to Siberia and or being shot by a teenaged security agent without trial or hope of a reprieve.
This is Tom Rob Smith's first novel, published in 2008 and followed immediately n 2009 by a sequel, The Secret Speech, with the same major characters (who managed to survive the first book). It has mystery upon mystery, romance, death, betrayal, history, violence, blood, murder, escapes and desperate flights through snow packed woods. It is reminiscent of the excellent Arkady Renko works of Martin Cruz Smith, but completely worthy of the comparison and very different. Child 44 was emotionally not easy to read, but it absorbed me and I won't forget it.
The film was faithful to the book but had to omit what turned out to be major portions of the original story. I normally watch a film adaptation of a novel after reading the book, but in this case having seen the film first actually added a lot to reading the book.
Child 44 is gritty, violent and sometimes hard to read, but worth it. It has scenes and characters that are now burned into my memory. I knew life under Stalnist Communism was hard, but this book gives me a whole new appreciation of what it must have been like in a world where offending someone or being in the wrong place at the wrong time could result in a knock on the door at 4 am (the arresting time for the MGB, predecessor to the KGB) arrest, torture, transportation in a freight car to Siberia and or being shot by a teenaged security agent without trial or hope of a reprieve.
This is Tom Rob Smith's first novel, published in 2008 and followed immediately n 2009 by a sequel, The Secret Speech, with the same major characters (who managed to survive the first book). It has mystery upon mystery, romance, death, betrayal, history, violence, blood, murder, escapes and desperate flights through snow packed woods. It is reminiscent of the excellent Arkady Renko works of Martin Cruz Smith, but completely worthy of the comparison and very different. Child 44 was emotionally not easy to read, but it absorbed me and I won't forget it.
Review Date: 12/4/2009
I have never been a fan of the western novel....until now. I just discovered Loren D. Estleman and what a treat! This guy does western landscape better than Zane Grey, does gritty realism as well as Walter Mosley and adds historical characters and verisimilitude like E.L. Doctorow.
Page Murdock is a 40-year-old Montana U.S. Marshal until he seemingly resigns his post to become part owner of the Apache Princess saloon in San Sabado, New Mexico, the "City of Widows". On the road he incurs the enmity (and pistol whipping) of Sheriff Frank Baronet and when he arrives he finds an unexpected third partner in the saloon -- his former lover Colleen Bower, also known as Poker Annie. Estleman's prowess as a detective story author is evident and Mordock's first person narrative is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. The mystery is only slowly unveiled as the book unwinds in short, memorable chapters filled with vivid characters including Governor Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur) Geronimo and town marshal Rosario Ortiz. Ortiz appears to be a slovenly widower, the father of 11 children, whose primary duties have been building privies and shooting coyotes to keep them from disturbing the Catholic services attended by "Las Viudas", a sisterhood of widows left behind by blood feuds, marauding Apaches and a hard land. Once again, appearance is not always reality.
This book has great authenticity and damn few anachronisms. At one point a character "snaps the hammer on the chamber of a Hawken." In 1881 the muzzleloading Hawken plains rifle was already a collector's item and its hammer falls on a percussion nipple, not the chamber of a cartridge gun. On the other hand Murdock is armed with a five-shot English Deane-Adams revolver for which he must reload his own ammunition adapted from 45 Colt cases. He carries a Winchester but others rely on the Springfield, Remington Creedmoor, Henry end the El Tigre Mexican Winchester copy. His horse, a claybank, hates him because it somehow knows he will cut its throat on the Jornada del Muerto if he lacks any other cover when the lead and arrows fly.
I loved this book, in case you couldn't tell. I plan to look up the others in the series, and also give Estleman's detective yarns a shot. I recommend you do the same. Vaya con Dios.
Page Murdock is a 40-year-old Montana U.S. Marshal until he seemingly resigns his post to become part owner of the Apache Princess saloon in San Sabado, New Mexico, the "City of Widows". On the road he incurs the enmity (and pistol whipping) of Sheriff Frank Baronet and when he arrives he finds an unexpected third partner in the saloon -- his former lover Colleen Bower, also known as Poker Annie. Estleman's prowess as a detective story author is evident and Mordock's first person narrative is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. The mystery is only slowly unveiled as the book unwinds in short, memorable chapters filled with vivid characters including Governor Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur) Geronimo and town marshal Rosario Ortiz. Ortiz appears to be a slovenly widower, the father of 11 children, whose primary duties have been building privies and shooting coyotes to keep them from disturbing the Catholic services attended by "Las Viudas", a sisterhood of widows left behind by blood feuds, marauding Apaches and a hard land. Once again, appearance is not always reality.
This book has great authenticity and damn few anachronisms. At one point a character "snaps the hammer on the chamber of a Hawken." In 1881 the muzzleloading Hawken plains rifle was already a collector's item and its hammer falls on a percussion nipple, not the chamber of a cartridge gun. On the other hand Murdock is armed with a five-shot English Deane-Adams revolver for which he must reload his own ammunition adapted from 45 Colt cases. He carries a Winchester but others rely on the Springfield, Remington Creedmoor, Henry end the El Tigre Mexican Winchester copy. His horse, a claybank, hates him because it somehow knows he will cut its throat on the Jornada del Muerto if he lacks any other cover when the lead and arrows fly.
I loved this book, in case you couldn't tell. I plan to look up the others in the series, and also give Estleman's detective yarns a shot. I recommend you do the same. Vaya con Dios.
Review Date: 12/7/2009
As a fan of Boris Akunin's series of books about the amazing secret agent Erast Fandorin, I thought I would give this series a try. It was a wise decision. If you like Fandorin you will love the Little Mother Pelagia (and her secret alter ego).
This yarn gets off to a slow start with a group of relatives and others gathered at a Russian country estate during the waning days of the Czars. But soon the mystery begins as an unknown assailant declares a vendetta on the mistress of the estate by attacking the ones she loves most in her life. Sister Pelagia is dispatched to comfort the family and she inserts herself into the mystery, using her nun's habit to cloak her awesome powers of deduction. One plot twist follows another until one violent climax is followed by a trial and yet another violent attack. If you deduce the villain before the ending, you are a better sleuth than I.
If you like Akunin's work, you will really like this.
This yarn gets off to a slow start with a group of relatives and others gathered at a Russian country estate during the waning days of the Czars. But soon the mystery begins as an unknown assailant declares a vendetta on the mistress of the estate by attacking the ones she loves most in her life. Sister Pelagia is dispatched to comfort the family and she inserts herself into the mystery, using her nun's habit to cloak her awesome powers of deduction. One plot twist follows another until one violent climax is followed by a trial and yet another violent attack. If you deduce the villain before the ending, you are a better sleuth than I.
If you like Akunin's work, you will really like this.
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