Child 44 (The Child 44 Trilogy, 1)

I originally purchased this book back in 2008 when it was published as a hardcover. It sat on my shelf for a couple of years and then for some reason I got rid of it. I came across the title again a couple months ago while looking for great mystery and thriller books. I purchased it again and was not disappointed. This is indeed a great mystery and thriller.Summary (no spoilers)The story involves Leo Demidov, a member of the Russian Secret Police or the MGB in Stalinist and Kruschev era Russia. Leo is a man who fights for the state; questioning nothing and performing his duties no matter how monstrous they are. It is only after discovering the innocence of a man labelled as a spy, does he begin to question things.By questioning things, he puts himself and his wife, Raisa, in danger.Leo and Raisa are forced by the State to Volusk, a car factory town. It is here that Leo, as a member of the Militia, becomes involved in the search for a serial killer. He realizes that a former MGB coworker's concern over the death of his son as being murder was true, when young girl's body is found in the same fashion. Enlisting the help of his superior officer and his wife, Leo fights against the system to find the killer and end the killings that in the eyes of the State can't possibly exist.I loved this book. The detail, the emotion, the research are all superb. I truly felt as though I was following the characters through Russia in the winter, spring, and summer. The focus on Russian life and the Stalinist state of the 1950s is thought-provoking. The book serves neither to deplore or applaud the system, it just tells it how it was.The characters are well drawn. The character of Leo shows a man torn by what he knows is right and what he has been taught. Raisa grows as a character. Her changes are subtle, but like her husband she too is struggling with morality and ideology. Especially that as a teacher she taught State propaganda. The other characters are not as developed, but really isn't the need. The only thing that is very remarkable is that over the entire book, every character is put to the test in terms of morality and ideology.The book is filled with twists and turns and many surprise moments. If you are looking for a book to keep you up at nights and keep you thinking after you've finished the book, this one is for you. Of note, this is book one of a trilogy and will be released as a motion picture this Fall, starring Tom Hardy (Inception), Noomi Rapace (The Girl with Dragon Tattoo), and Gary Oldman. Read it before you see it.Review based on 2009 paperback version, Grand Central Publishing.

Leo Demidov is a good Soviet citizen. A special-forces hero in World War II, Leo settled almost by default into a comfortable position as an officer of the MGB (the postwar, Stalin-era precursor to the KGB) when peace came in 1945. Demidov believes that Soviet society, although still in transition, is "moving toward a better state of existence" in which there will be no poverty, no crime, none of the other social evils associated with the excess and decadence of capitalism. He spends his days investigating and arresting those suspected of crimes against the State, and handing them over to be interrogated, and, finally, either exiled or executed. Although he knows not everyone he brings in for interrogation is actually guilty, he rarely feels more than a token twinge of conscience: after all, these heavy-handed measures are necessary to keep any true spies or insurgents from slipping through the cracks. It's for the greater good. His tolerance for the suffering of innocents reaches its limits, however, when he discovers evidence of a serial murderer targeting children throughout Russia. This killer has to be stopped - but how can Leo investigate a murder spree authorities won't even admit could have happened in their crime-free socialist paradise?I've never been a great fan of the espionage/political thriller genre. I don't exactly dislike it - I thought "The Bourne Identity" and "Old Boys" were pretty good, and "The Manchurian Candidate" is excellent - but I don't gravitate toward it either. It was the serial-killer plot, loosely based on the Andrei Chikatilo case, not the Soviet Russia setting, that made me excited to read Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44." An immediately engaging opening chapter sets up the premise of violence against children (and will call the Chikatilo case to the mind of any reader familiar with it, even if they didn't know beforehand that Smith had drawn on some of its details for inspiration), and we first meet Leo Demidov when he goes to "convince" a grieving father that his son's death was an accident, not a murder. After that, however, Smith sets the child-murder plot on the back burner for 150 pages, while Leo tracks a fugitive and butts heads with an ambitious, spiteful colleague and faces an ethical dilemma in which he has to choose between his job and his wife - and I was turning the pages so greedily, I hardly noticed. The chapters dealing with Leo's life in Moscow as an MGB officer read less like a political thriller and more like a historical dystopia. And when Leo's choices bring him back across the path of the child-murderer, this page-turner kicks into overdrive.Although Smith's straightforward prose style and skill at building suspense drew me in from the start, as did his gift for bringing his minor characters so vividly to life in the space of a few pages that I honestly cared whether they lived or died, I did recognize a few flaws in the novel very early on, although I was enjoying the story too much to care. I don't know how "Child 44" passed through as many editorial hands as Smith's acknowledgements imply without anyone catching the more distractingly obvious, occasionally comic, misplaced modifiers. Also, I had to regard the historical accuracy of the novel somewhat skeptically, even before I had read the criticisms of those whose knowledge of the time and place in which the story is set far exceeds mine, based on the characters' names. "Leo" isn't a Russian name, not even as a short form of "Leonid." (I don't know if "Child 44" has ever been translated into Russian, but Russian websites discussing the film adaptation refer to the protagonist as "Lev Demidov.") Furthermore, although Smith seems to be generally aware of patronymics and diminutives, his use of them is neither nuanced nor consistent.A more serious flaw, however, is the novel's ending. There's a major plot twist that genuinely shocked me, but once the initial impact wore off, I felt rather cheated: it was just too improbable a development, and at the eleventh hour no less, with no foreshadowing to speak of. After that, what had been a thoughtful thriller gave way to sequences of cinematic derring-do and a resolution that was altogether too pat. In a straight-to-paperback pulp thriller, it would have worked, but the first 350 pages of "Child 44" had led me to expect something a little more plausible, a little more haunting, a little less open-and-shut.Although the ending is a bit of a letdown, it remains entertaining, and Smith's characters, intriguingly nuanced though never exactly complex, remain people you care about, whose story you'll want to follow all the way to the end. I wouldn't say "Child 44" is an unmissable reading experience, but it's fast and absorbing, and thriller fans will find it worth their while to pick up. Meanwhile, the strengths of this debut novel are such that I'm eager to read more by Tom Rob Smith, to see how his talents have matured.