Child 44

The Soviet Union, 1953. Under Stalin's regime the only crimes recognised are those against the State. When the mutilated body of a young boy is discovered on train tracks in Moscow, Officer Leo Demidov – a war hero, utterly devoted to the Ministry – blatantly ignores the evidence and the protests of the grief-stricken family and dismisses it as a possible crime because he is told to. But something in him knows there is more. His confidence that he serves a greater good is shaken when he is forced to watch the brutal torture of a man he knows is innocent, and then told to investigate his own wife for treason. Punished for his doubt, the Ministry exile him to a town deep in the Ural Mountains, where he stumbles on the murder of another child. And then another. On the run and risking everything, Leo pursues a horrifying serial killer, even though doing so makes him an enemy of the State. Intimately connected with real events, Child 44 is a thriller of extraordinary power and a harrowing portrayal of the terror inflicted upon people by their own governments, examining the disturbing truth of what it means to survive beneath a dictatorship – and what happens when one man decides to fight back. "A rare blend of great insight, excellent writing and a refreshingly original story… in a class of its own" - Nelson DeMille