The opening pages of Smith’s thrilling novel introduce the reader to the dark world of Stalinist Russia: two young children, desperate for food, pursue a cat to kill and take home for supper. The incident is crucial to the story that follows, introducing the central idea of the chase – this is a world where everyone is constantly looking over their shoulder to see who might be coming after them.
The Greater Good
The main action of Child 44 begins in Moscow in 1953. Leo Demidov is an idealistic young officer, keen to uphold the principles of a society which insists there is no crime, and that anyone who speaks out against the regime should be dealt with mercilessly in the name of the greater good: “Barbarity, certainly, but barbarity for a reason, barbarity for the greater good. Greater Good the Greater Good. It was necessary to repeat it, to carve it onto every thought, so that it ran like ticker tape across the bottom of your mind” (page 84).
Leo’s beliefs are called into question when the bodies of mutilated children begin to appear throughout Russia, the work of a serial killer who removes the victim’s stomach and stuffs their mouths with tree bark. Any link between the killings is at first denied by the authorities – after all, there is no crime – who pin the various attacks on individuals from outside the accepted boundaries of society: homosexuals and those of limited mental capacity.
Going Against the Party Line
Leo is initially reluctant to investigate, as such a course of action, going against the Party Line, places his own life as well as those of his family in immense danger. He soon finds that the privileges that have been granted to him as an officer can be taken away from him virtually overnight – not even he is safe in this world of constant pursuit and persecution. In the end, the novel is as much about Leo’s struggle against dictatorship as it is about his search for justice for the murdered children.
The novel is not for the faint-hearted; unflinching in its portrayal of violence, it includes graphic torture scenes and detailed descriptions of the atrocities suffered by the murder victims. The quality of Smith’s prose is disarmingly straightforward, dealing with difficult issues in a matter-of-fact style that makes the content of the novel all the more shocking. Smith, who is aged just 29, has previously worked as a story-liner on television series such as Family Affairs and Bad Girls, and his ability to tell a story without ever losing the attention of the reader is perhaps a result of this training.
Smith originally thought of the story as a possible film rather than novel, and the film rights have already been bought by director Ridley Scott. The novel itself sparked a bidding war when it was launched at the London Book Fair, and has already been sold to 22 countries although not, as yet, to Russia.
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith is published in the UK by Simon & Schuster, 2008, 470 pages, ISBN 978-1847371263.
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