Outside A Dog

And now I have to admit to something: when I buy books for my mother as presents, I basically just think of books that I’d like to read myself and then get them for her. She and I have remarkably similar taste in books, so it all works out in the end… except that I end up reading her books instead of my own. This Christmas, I got her Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. Fantastic book. Unlike my mother, who was hooked instantly, it took me about 50 pages or so to really get into the story, but when I did, I found that I had a hard time putting it down. (I think part of the problem is that I started this book expecting some other plot and then kept waiting for that one to start — I don’t know why, but I thought this book was about a man trying to avenge his father’s death. Now to figure out what book I was actually thinking of.)

The story jumps around at times to different parts of Russia, but it mainly follows Leo and his wife, Raisa. We meet Leo as a model agent of the Russian Ministry of State Security, but after refusing to denounce his wife as a spy and a subsequent fall from grace at the hands of a rival officer, he’s demoted to a lowly position in the militia and he and his wife are exiled to a town of no importance. While there, Leo stumbles upon the body of a murdered child — one that has been mutilated in the exact same manner as the child of a former State Security coworker. The rest of the novel follows Leo and Raisa as they uncover a number of similar cases and attempt to find the murderer — all while hoping to escape the notice of the State Security. Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a novel if the couple didn’t get into all sorts of trouble along the way, which they do.

As I mentioned before, Child 44 did manage to eventually enthrall me, and I lost several hours of sleep before I reached the end of the novel. It’s of the edge-of-your-seat variety and has enough twists and turns to please just about anyone. Watching Leo’s character develop, though, was the aspect that I most enjoyed. Starting as a picture-perfect war hero and model officer, Leo is changed by his both his stubborn determination to catch the killer and the realization that his relationship with his wife is not what he thought. I can’t speak as to the accuracy of Tom Rob Smith’s portrayal of Stalinist Russia, but it certainly left an impression.