This is out now - a book that a lot of people have been talking about.
"Soviet Union
Ukraine
Village of Chervoy
25 January 1933
Since Maria had decided to die her cat would have to fend for itself. She'd already cared for it far beyond the point where keeping a pet made any sense. Rats and mice had long since been trapped and eaten by the villagers. Domestic animals had disappeared shortly after that."
Stalin's Russia, 1953. In a time when the only crimes acknowledged are those against the state, one man is determined to uncover the truth behind a series of murders the government denies.
Inspired by real-life serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, Child 44 is a thrillingly dark literary debut by 29 year-old Cambridge graduate Tom Rob Smith.
Drawing from elements of Chikatilo's life, including his traumatising childhood growing up during the famine caused by Stalin's agricultural policies, and his luring of victims from train stations into nearby woods before killing and mutilating them, this debut literary thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat while enveloping you in the claustrophobic and paranoid Russia that existed under Stalin's rule.
When Leo Demidov, one of the country's most loyal Security Ministry officers starts to question the State cover-up of crimes, his comfortable life takes a dramatic turn. Forced by senior officials to dismiss the horrific murder of a young boy and witnessing the torture of an alleged spy Leo knows is innocent, he chooses to give up his protected life to save his marriage, already on the brink of collapse. His decision leads them to a town deep in the Ural Mountains where he uncovers the murder of another child, a murder which bares a frightening resemblance to a child murder he was forced to deny.
With a killer on the loose, murdering children and dumping their bodies near train tracks all over the country, Leo and his wife set off on a wild hunt across Russia, risking disgrace, torture and death to hunt down the killer.