Child 44 - Books (Tom Rob Smith, Hardcover)

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.

Customer Reviews of Child 44

Emanon
London, England
9th November 2008

Nice try. Some of it is good, some of it isn't.
The book is OK but it has its flaws. The 'twist' towards the end does not entirely make sense, and plausibility is lacking. Also the dialogue is somewhat stilted. Finally the police work in the book is not convincing. At times it seems contradictory and there are leaps in credibility. I must say, however, that Tom Rob Smith does write good prose. It reads very smoothly.

Historian
Lyon
8th October 2008

What were the booker judges thinking?
I read this when I saw that it was listed on the Booker longlist and praised for being an authentic picture of life in Stalin's Terror. I was really shocked that it was longlisted. As a thriller, it somehow manages to be dull and obvious. The murderer is revealed far too early for there to be real suspense. The writing is poor. As a picture of Stalin's Russia it was embarrassingly bad. There was not a single sentence in the book that suggested the author had ever been to Russia, let alone that he could summon up the atmosphere of 1953. The whole thing is a joke. There are elementary mistakes throughout the book - streets and buildings, metro lines in Moscow appear here that did not even exist yet in 1953 - suggesting that the author doesn;t even know how to do elementary research.

booklover
Belfast
7th October 2008

what were they thinking about
So, the Booker had to pick a thriller for the short list to dispel criticisms of being elitist. But surely they could have picked something better than this. It is very run of the mill, not well written and with poor dialogue. The plot is riddled with endless unbelievable turns. How easy would it have been in Stalin's Russia to get various groups of people to help strangers? The relationship between the two main characters is unreal and the final denouement -- I will not spoil the ending for those inclined to read it -- beggars belief. A great disappointment.

Julia Thomas

1st October 2008

Absolutely Brilliant
I thought this book was excellent - I was gripped from start to finish and enjoyed it so much I felt the need to write my first review! Its such an interesting and clever story and had me completely mesmerized.

Gavs Dad
Cambridge UK
28th September 2008

Fantastic read
For a first novel this has been the best thing I've read this year.
Read it now as it will make a great film and should star Viggo Mortensen!

It has all the ingredients of a great thriller