Child 44 and The Secret Speech

Child 44 and The Secret Speech

Last year Tom Rob Smith burst onto the literary scene with Child 44, the claustrophobic thriller set in Stalinist Russia, where a child killer is on the loose and one of the most loyal Security Ministry officers starts to question a system where the only crimes acknowledge are those against the state.

Long-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Child 44 received critical acclaim, taking home the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for best thriller of 2008.

This year, 29-year-old Tom Rob Smith delivered another gripping thriller loaded with political betrayal and revenge, The Secret Speech, this time set against the tumultuous post-Stalin years.

It's 1956 in the Soviet Union. Stalin is dead and with his passing, a violent regime is beginning to fracture, leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals and the criminals are innocent.

The catalyst comes when a secret manifesto composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant and a murderer. Its promise: the Soviet Union will transform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget Stalin's tyranny so easily, that demand revenge of the most appalling nature.

Meanwhile, former MGB officer Leo Demidov is facing his own turmoil. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his involvement in the murder of their parents, and they're not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo and his family are in great danger from someone bearing a grudge.

Tom Rob Smith is a UK novelist and a Cambridge graduate who works as a screenwriter. Child 44, his first novel, won the Crime Writers' Association's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for the best adventure/thriller novel in 2008. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize in the same year.

Child 44 has now been translated into over 30 languages, including being recently sold in China, the first Communist country to buy the rights to the story. Over one million copies have been sold worldwide, including a quarter of a million copies in Japan, after it was awarded the best criminal novel of 2008. Film rights have been sold to Ridely Scott/Fox 2000.

Tom Rob Smith's screenwriting credits include an original thriller that has recently been sold to Universal Studios and he's been hired to write a science fiction movie for Warner Brothers, based on a Japanese anime series called Robotech, with Tobey Maguire attached.

Simon & Schuster
Author: Tom Rob Smith
Child 44
ISBN: 978073181483
Price: $34.95


The Secret Speech
Simon & Schuster
Author: Tom Rob Smith
ISBN: 9781847371294