Tom Rob Smith

I received this book in a Giveaway. I rated a 5, but would probably say 4.5 out of 5 if I could.

My favorite thing about this book, it is very well written. The author knows how to tell a story and do their research. I'm not sure if everything is 100 percent accurate, (I'm not going to look any of it up) but most of the details were believable to me, as far as the locations, history, and fauna are concerned.

I'm a sucker for an interesting premise, and this book delivered on that front. The problem with an interesting premise for a lot of books, they can't deliver on the story. I will admit, about halfway through this book, I wasn't jazzed on the direction we were going. It didn't seem all that "believable" to me. However, the author won me over, and I found myself invested.

The characters are great. I wish they would've jumped off the page more, but they weren't boring or too one dimensional.

This is a great Sci-Fi book. One I would gladly buy for my collection.… (lisätietoja)

Daniel believes that his parents are happily enjoying retired life in Sweden until the day he gets a call from his father telling him his mother has had a mental breakdown, been admitted to a mental hospital, and escaped. And then his mother calls him, telling him that everything his father has told him is a lie and to meet her at the airport. And so begins his mother’s struggle to convince him of a town-wide cover-up of the murder of a teen girl and a conspiracy against her for trying to uncover the truth.

A really well-done plot with great pacing and some clever twists. Tilda’s story is at all times equal parts convincing and suspicious, and it keeps you guessing right up to the end.… (lisätietoja)

I'm impressed! Just a few weeks back, I watched the movie, “Child 44” (2015), starring Tom Hardy (who very much resembles my son, Hoyt) as Leo Demidov, and absolutely LOVED it. I have never heard of this book nor the movie, and I’m usually not into this kind of detective/investigative/thriller type genre at all. But, Tom Rob Smith did an excellent job in keeping me interested through to the very last page. In fact, he’s got a few twists in the book that didn’t come out in the movie. Surprise, surprise! You really do get the feel of what life was like under a strict totalitarian regime like in the USSR during the war. Fear, being the driving force behind the paranoia of every human behavior and action. If you want to know what it will be like living in a totalitarian run country, read this book.

The author got the idea for this novel from his research on the investigations of the MGB (the State Security Force) and the true serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, who went around killing over 52 women and children in and around Moscow between 1978 and 1990. Smith’s research uncovered such gruesome interrogations brought down on so many innocent people by the State Security Force, but decided not to include them here in this book because he thought people wouldn’t believe it and claim he was only trying to create a shock effect. I kind of wish he would have laid it all out here. Instead, he used Camphor oil as the truth serum to get the truth from certain suspects….not as interesting or thrilling, as this novel is considered a "thriller". Although, this is said to be just a novel, I would consider it to be more of a historical novel, based on a time and era that actually existed.

It is 1953, Stalin's Russia, a time when no one was innocent, not even your best friend, whom you trust...but you must watch with mistrust. The MGB were after anyone who even slightly spoke or thought negatively against the country. Everything you said or did was noted in a suspicious nature, even things beyond your control...such as a sickness. Why were you sick at this particular time? Were you faking it? Now, you are being watched. How about a school teacher? Had to be on the good side of all students because it would take just one to go home and tell their parents what was said or done against a student. Then that teacher would be watched and sooner or later brought down. It didn’t take much. An argument between two people could find one or the other being watched. And anyone being watched would eventually be found "guilty" for something, brought in for interrogation, tortured to start revealing names of other so-called insurrectionists and killed. Once other names are spoken, then those are brought in and tortured until more names and more innocent people are brought in, and the cycle continues.

This was the job of the MGB, the political police, and Leo Demidov was an MGB rounding up innocents for interrogation. But, when the murder of a friend’s child hits close to home, and Leo later discovers other children murdered in the same fashion, he finally refuses to accept the lies of the State Security Force and feels it his duty to find out the truth and the person committing these atrocities because, after all, they were taught there is no “crime” in Russia. Leo was found out and demoted...well...that was the excuse from a subordinate who had it out for him and turned him in on information based on lies. Leo was transferred out with his wife to deplorable conditions in a small, poor town out in the country, outside of Moscow, to face the greatest of humiliations. From there, the novel becomes quite the page-turner while he attempts to hunt down this serial killer.
-----------------------------------------------------------
List of books highly recommended by the author for further reading:
1. Man Is Wolf to Man – Janusz Bardach [memoir] (2003)
2. Gulag – Anne Applebaum (2004)
3. The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (2003)
4. The Harvest of Sorrow – Robert Conquest (2002)
5. Everyday Stalinism – Shelia Fitzpatrick (1999)
6. Russian Pulp – Anthony Olcott (2001) [pertaining to Russian police procedures]
7. The Uses of Terror – Boris Levytsky (1972)
8. The Killer Department – Robert Cullen (1993) [real-life navigation into the crimes of Andrei Chikatilo]… (lisätietoja)