Along with the award-winning
fiction and classics that I dig, I’m also a huge fan of the paperback thriller.
There’s quite nothing like a Lee Child or Jo Nesbo to forget abt your cares for
a while and immerse yourself in the world of mutilated bodies, cryptic
talismans and the brooding alcoholic detective. So, it is no wonder that I
would love Child 44 – Tom Smith’s
debut novel set in Stalin’s Russia. I must add that this is unlike any thriller
I’ve read before as the tension here has as much to do with the chase of a
dangerous psychopath who is murdering children around the western countryside
and carving out their stomach, as it is abt the State machinery which is
pursuing the protagonist Leo Demidov, a member of the State Police (MGB), for
his efforts to catch the murderer. In case you are rightly puzzled, this is
because in Stalinist Russia, crimes such as murder, burglary and prostitution cannot exist and therefore, the murders
must be written off as accidents unless Leo can prove otheriwise and stop the
murderer. Thus, the chase for the serial killer is intertwined by the State
Police’s machinations, persecution, and eventual hunt of Leo & his
beautiful wife Raisa.
The novel’s prologue
describes the disappearance of a young boy Andrei who had gone hunting in the
forest with his younger brother. Jumping several decades, the novel then brings
us to the dead body of a young boy, Arkady, who may have committed suicide on
the railway tracks. Parallel to this thread is introduced the thread abt Anatoly,
a veterinarian, who is suspected by the MGB of being a spy and is pursued and
eventually killed by them. The protagonist Leo Demidov is part of the team
which investigates Arkady’s death & writes it off as suicide, as well as
the team which finally captures Anatoly.
Leo is a part of the MGB whose
task is to wipe out the faintest stench of any real or imagined dissent or
disloyalty to the State through continuous spying, interrogation, torture,
threats & lies. This is a world where Anatoly, a respectable veterinarian,
is forced to flee from his home as he fears the net is closing around him,
though he has committed no wrong & is simply ‘suspected’ of being a foreign
spy. Leo is a part of the system that persecutes innocent citizens like Anatoly
and believes that in doing so, he’s actually serving the country. Like most of
his colleagues, he too initially rejects evidence that a murderer is committing
the killings around the countryside. It is only when he becomes a pawn in
bureaucratic politics and is framed for being disloyal to the State, does he slowly
begin to reexamine the foundations on which his profession has rested. He
realizes that he is the only one who can apprehend & stop the murderer
since the actual State refuses to even accept that there have been any murders!
Alongside the story of Leo’s
gradual awakening, Tom Smith also infuses the thriller with the
slowly-raveling & unusual love story of Leo & his wife Raisa. It is a
love that is neither rooted in the conventional framework of marital affection
& respect, nor does it seek succor from some deep-seated passion. Raisa, a
school teacher & free thinker, who is critical of the Soviet State’s
politics and Leo’s role in furthering its atrocities, emerges as his equal and
his true partner once Leo becomes a fugitive, being relentlessly punished for
questioning the State’s decree. When love finally blossoms between the two, it
is with the poignant acceptance that it is bound to be fleeting.
The second half of the novel
revolves around Leo’s demotion & exile where he continues to invstigate the
murders with Raisa’s support. While the ending is a bit too pat for my liking,
one also realizes that a tragic end, while more realistic, wouldn’t necessarily
be more satisfying. Perhaps my only genuine crib is that the murderer is never
fully fleshed out or terrifying, perhaps because the MGB and State policies are
far more so.
