Child 44 (Leo Demidov, Bk 1)
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Book Type: Paperback
Thomas A. reviewed on + 2 more book reviews
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.
