REVIEW - Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

A short notice trip to Puerto Vallarta to see my brother and his wife on vacation led me to pluck a couple books from my home library (i.e a few bookshelves) rather than spend time with the Kindle app.

I started with Child 44, a novel set in Stalinist Russia from the 1930's through the 50's, a period that monumentally failed to produce much in the way of humor.

The story is about a security police officer who pursues a series of murders of young children. The authorities refuse to accept that crime exists at all in Russia, saying that crime is a Capitalist disease, but Leo doggedly pieces together clues while contending with the State, his commanding officers, and his dastardly second-in-command.

The trouble is - and I found this years ago reading Solzhenitsyn - Russia was generally, and Stalinist Russia was particularly a gruesome, depressing place to be. Hence, any fact-based story was and is necessarily gruesome and depressing. Even the language and place names sound miserable.

Tom Rob Smith managed to lift me just a bit out of the freezing mire, or maybe that was the constant service of the fabulous waiters in PVA.

Either way, this has now been made into a film due out later this April, so no doubt I'll march along to my local multiplex and relive the horrors.