Book of the Week: Tom Rob Smith's "Child 44"

One of the few books I've read in recent memory that actually deserves the hype it's getting (most of it, anyway), Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 is a fascinating, haunting, depressing thriller set in the Soviet Union during the tail end of Stalin's reign. A serial killer is preying on children throughout the country, but since there is no crime in the Soviet Union -- crime is a problem of the decadent West, not the worker's paradise -- there can be no serial killers. A disgraced former State Security officer risks his life to prove the killer exists and to stop him. There are some wildly improbable coincidences and other flaws with Smith's story, but the way he makes Stalinist Russia come alive is breathtaking in its imagination and despair. Child 44 is a powerful and compelling first novel.