Child 44

Devastatingly Perfect. Soviet Russia, 1950s. Leo Demidov is an MGB intelligence officer; by all accounts the perfect soldier, never questioning his orders, and extremely loyal to the Party. When a child is found dead at some abandoned rail tracks, he is tasked to question the neighbors and close t......more

If it weren't for the Soviet Union and the blood lust of the Russian communists, I would not exist. My parents were World War II refugees, on the run for their lives from Soviet-occupied Latvia. They arrived in the United States at about the same time, immigrants with nothing but what they wore on t......more

Smith offers a look into the Soviet Union of 1953, a dark, desperate place in which the state had become a manifestation of Stalin’s paranoia. The ideological need of the state to present the communist ideal as an actualized reality impaired its ability, its willingness to address bad things when th......more

One of my favourite and and usually absorbing sub-genres if a very well written mystery set in a perfectly creates historical or alternative reality, this book is a prime example. A savage, yet curiously stylised murder of 'child 44' in 1950s Moscow is customarily cleared by a state security service......more

Die Geschichte spielt in Moskau/ in der Sowjetunion 1953. Auf Bahnschienen wird ein toter Junge gefunden, der ganz offensichtlich ermordet wurde, doch zu Stalins Zeiten hat es keine Verbrechen zu geben. Also ist der Junge verunglückt. Auch Geheimdienstoffizier Leo Demidow glaubt zunächst daran, doch......more