My favorite mystery for 2008 is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. It is set in Russia while Stalin was in power and there is no crime. Leo Demidov, a war hero and MGB officer, is a big believer in his country and its laws but when a killer does strike he is torn between being obedient to the State or investigating the murders and being demoted and exiled. He knows a killer is on the loose so he takes a chance and does the right thing with only his wife by his side. Well, Smith’s new book is out.
The Secret Speech picks up bascially where Child 44 left off. It is 1956 and the new Khrushchev regime has leaked a “secret speech” that basically tells all of Stalins notorius crimes. Demidov has left his MGB days behind and started a homicide department but his former colleagues fearful of reprisals of thier past victims begin to take thier own lives. Demidov now has to face the fact that many of the people he arrested and sent to the gulags were innocent and want revenge. It becomes clear that the suicides are not what they appear to be when Fraera, the wife of a priest that Demidov sent to prison, targets him and his family. She kidnaps Zoya, his adopted daughter, and threatens to kill her if he doesn’t free her husband from prison. Tom Rob Smith again gives us a novel full of action and as in Child 44 successfully personalizes the tragic and brutal life of many Russians during this time period.
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