If you just went by this blog, you might think that I’ve stopped reading books. Well that’s not true. I just stopped writing about them here. Quite why, I couldn’t really say, but I intend to right that wrong. So let’s start with a book I read a few months ago, and its sequel that I just finished today.

Child 44 is the first book in a series by Tom Rob Smith featuring Leo Demidov, an MGB (the precursor to the KGB) agent for the Russian state under Stalin. He does what’s required of him, arresting subversives and anyone deemed to have broken the rules, for them to be tortured or sent off to prison or camps.
Against this backdrop, children across a wide part of the country are disappearing. But this is state where murder is unknown. The idea that there might be a serial killer is unconscionable.
How does someone investigate a crime, when that crime does not exist because the state says so. That’s the central tenet of Child 44.
The backdrop is fascinating and the book reads like a thriller. Well, it is a thriller. And it’s a superbly told thriller, that keeps you turning the pages, as the full horror of events slowly unfolds.
The book’s been a best seller in the UK, and according to the author on a recent edition of the Simon Mayo Book programme, has sold over 250,000 copies in Japan. When I was in Prague recently, I saw posters all over the underground advertising the Czech edition. Ridley Scott has the film rights (although he’s got such a large slate on his plate just now with Robin Hood, Monopoly, The Forgotten War and this, that goodness knows when he’ll get this done).
Anyway, a cracking read, and well worth looking out.

Last month the book’s sequel, The Secret Speech came out. And it’s more of the same – in the very best way possible.
But first a warning – you might not want to read the following if you’ve not read Child 44 yet, but I don’t give a great deal away.
We find Demidov hoping that he’s finally put his old life behind him, and he’s heading up the new homicide division of the Moscow police – even though it’s not officially recognised. But Stalin has died and Khrushchev is in power. He makes his Secret Speech – something I knew nothing about – and suddenly everything changes. What happens to people who have behaved one way under Stalin, and now must change their ways? What happens when some of those imprisoned are now released?
Demidov gets personally involved and his family is disintegrating. Before we know it, he’s going into a Gulag undercover and things are not going well for him.
If anything, the pace is even faster, but as in Child 44, it’s a fascinating insight into something I certainly knew very little about. It’s a scary world.
I rattled through this book in record time, and now realise that it’s going to be at least a year before I can read more of Demidov’s exploits. I look forward to them.