Child 44

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Tom Rob Smith

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Pages: 480 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 1847371264

Pub: Simon & Schuster Ltd

Pub date: 2008-03-03

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 392

Editorial Review:

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.

Reader Reviews:

The first few pages are simply riveting (0/0 people found this helpful)

It had been quite a while since I had been gripped as I was when I started Child 44. The prologue, set in a starving Ukranian village in the 30's, is so terrifying and vividly drawn that I started feeling guilty about the contents of my fridge. What followed wasn't any less good.In particular, the description of daily life under a totalitarian regime that could have you arrested for thoughts that you didn't even know you had, is so well done that you feel oppressed and yet cannot put the book down.It makes you wonder how anyone could actually survive under Stalin's rule.The prose is simple and effective, the story gripping. I only gave it four stars and not five because the ending is a little bit of a let down. When we know who the murderer is and why all those children were massacred I failed to be convinced of the logic behind it all.However here is a real page turner that doesn't take long to finish since you cannot stop reading and is utterly convincing in its depiction of the USSR in the 50's.

believable and gratifyingly tense (2/2 people found this helpful)

as you read this book the only certainty is that the Soviet State in 1953 operates to grind its citizens down into impotent subservience, and can snuff anyone out at will. paranoia is a legitimate and adaptive state of mind. those enforcing the state's oppression are justifiably even more paranoid as they face ambiguities where they may suspect being 'tested' themselves.
events are involving for the reader. tension and complexity are well sustained. dialogue can be subtle, where one's grasp of the subtext, and 'getting it right', may determine one's fate.
Tom Smith has also made a brave attempt at alluding to inner motivations for the method of serial killing, for which the lack of a 'clear explanation' has so irritated some reviewers. for further clarity you are better directed to textbooks of forensic psychology. it is not necessary here.

Remarkable for a debut (1/1 people found this helpful)

I borrowed this on a whim from my local library as it was part of their Man Booker Prize selection and I figured, what the hell! The story is unusual in that it's set in the dying days of Stalinist Russia but is a compelling tale with much human interest and spirit shining through. For a debut novel, its remarkable. I don't usually manage to read a book all the way through in two days but I did with this one. The author's still in his 20s so something of a precocious talent. Let's hope his next book is good, if not better. Thoroughly recommended.

Compelling, although not a typical page-turner (2/2 people found this helpful)

Might seem a bit contradictory, but this is not at all a page-turner in the normal sense of rapid movement and action - the detail is far too deep, dark and dense for that. And indeed that is exactly what keeps you turning the pages - the dour, opressive, stifling atmosphere of Stalin's Russia. It seeps into every corner of the main character's, Leo's, life, and that of his parents and wife Raisa. It tinges every single decision they make - what job he takes so that his parents get a decent apartment, and indeed it becomes part of Raisa's attraction to him. One of fear and becoming part of the system rather than left outside it. These are the most compelling parts of the book - Raisa's taut relationship with her husband, and indeed whether he turns her in at one point to save his own neck (and that of his parents). Through this we see how Stalin's system permeated every facet of people's lives then.

The investigation rides alongside this, but takes second stage at points. I agree too that the ending came across as somewhat contrived - especially given how well all else was thought out. I would have knocked one star off for that - but the rest is so well done that I decided to stick with 5.

Thrilling Debut (1/3 people found this helpful)

The crime plot itself may be perfuctory and less than compelling, but it is Tom Rob Smith's sense of time and place that marks this out as a thrilling debut. Stalinist Russia has never been as terrifyingly evoked in popular fiction - the constant dread and debilitating double-think cosumes the characters's souls, and the author paints this horrific society as the landscape of some surrealist horror story.

Long-listed for this year's Booker Prize, this far outshines the usual pretencious, onanistic dross that makes up the contenders for literary awards. Dark, evocative and ultimately deeply moving this is writing of the highest order, and I for one can't wait for Smith's next novel.

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