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Child 44

Child 44

Written by Tom Rob Smith

Longlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2008
Published by Simon & Schuster

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In Tom Rob Smith’s gripping thriller, the biggest threat to Leo Demidov is not the serial killer he is hunting but the State he is fighting to protect

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, the State executes disloyal citizens at will. Now a different kind of deadly threat, a child murderer, is on the loose. But in a society that is officially paradise, it’s a crime to suggest that a criminal, let alone a serial killer, is at large. Secret police officer Leo finds himself demoted and denounced by his enemies, his world turned upside down. The only way for him to save himself and his family is to catch a serial killer the State won’t even admit exists.

Tom Rob Smith

Tom Rob Smith

Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 was, for its time, an unusual Booker Prize choice. Based on the true case of a Soviet child murderer, readers could treat the book as a thriller or as something more ambitious
More about Tom Rob Smith