It took me just three months into 2008 to find a book that might be the novel of this year. In CHILD 44, first-time novelist Tom Rob Smith has come up with an engrossing story that will soon be the talk of the book world.
With its story based in Stalinist Russia and heavy with the paranoia that was then prevalent, you won’t want to put down this hefty read for one second. The story sucks you in from the opening of two boys on a hunt for any source of food for their family, to the very end, where a glimmer of hope shines through.
The story deals with up-and-coming officer Leo Demidov, a rising star in the State Security Force. He’s bought into the idea of what is good for the state is good for him, no matter what. But small cracks start to appear, with the gruesome actions of one of his fellow officers causing the downfall of Leo’s career. It really cracks after the capture of a supposed spy that turns out just to be widespread paranoia.
Then the accusations come that his wife Risa is a spy herself. With the option of washing his hands of the whole affair, he chooses to stick with his bride. This results in Leo being forced out of his job and then displaced to the middle of nowhere. It is there the body of a lone dead girl surfaces, with her stomach cut out, and the local force under the belief that a mentally challenged orphan was the killer.
It becomes apparent the orphan had nothing to do with it, especially when Leo stumbles onto another body who was killed just like the girl – this of a young boy, suggesting the crimes were performed by the same man. Leo tries to persuade his superior to look into any other deaths that also fit the descriptions.
With CHILD 44, Smith has fictionalized the true accounts of Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. In the author’s Russian world, it’s not the best idea to go up against the government with the idea that a serial killer exists. But instead of it just focusing on the killer, Smith weaves it through the book as a thread, with the main focus always on Leo and the investigation.
But fret not, as we are treated a few passages from the killer’s point of view. The writing never lets up as Leo pursues the truth. Even when all hope might be lost, Smith has the reader glued to the pages. It’s a view of Russia at its most mistrustful, where people are reported on for any little discrepancy in their daily lives. Smith has done a tireless job of research to make this novel as authentic as possible, and CHILD 44 is the type of book that deserves all the advance praise it is getting. It’s truly a marvel of storytelling in its own class. –Bruce Grossman
