Stephen Hayes reviewed Child 44 (Leo Demidov, #1) by Tom Rob Smith
Child 44 (published in 2008) is a thriller novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith. …
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4 stars
A whodunit set in Stalin's USSR, with echoes of Orwell's 1984, Koestler's Darkness at noon and Brink's A dry white season.
Generally well written, with a couple of annoying lapses (the misuse of "substitute" in a couple of places, for example).
Could the hero, Leo Demidov, be entering a career as a new fictional detective to follow? If so, this is where it all began.