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"Child 44", Tom Rob Smith
2 hours ago
As a glimpse into Stalinist Russia, this book is fascinating. It follows the lives of MGB agents and their families, the layers of paranoia and secrecy that surround them and the way they rationalize that terror in their everyday lives.
As a serial killer mystery, it starts out gripping and then becomes disjointed and unconvincing. It actually comprises surprisingly little of the book.
The author is much more interested in the portrayal of Stalin’s Russia than in the mystery, and it shows. The result is a very uneven book that ends abruptly and disappointingly. But the characters were so interesting that I still don’t regret reading it—I just wish it had done more with itself.
