Pocket

The most memorable thing about the first novel, of course, was the moral transformation of the hero, initially a charismatic tool of the brutal state apparatus, enforcing the Stalin-era edicts with grim efficiency until he becomes hunted rather hunter and earns some hard-won humanity. Part of the point of Child 44 was the protagonist’s journey of character – so how to follow this, when Leo has become a human being by the end of the first novel?

The Secret Speech performs this tricky balancing act by taking the reader back to 1949, with Leo the unreformed agent of the state, behaving with the callousness he once possessed before his life was turned upside down. We are then taken to the mid-fifties, after the death of Stalin (as cracks begin to show in the totalitarian Soviet State). Khrushchev’s famous denunciation of the Stalin era ushers in significant changes, and Leo Dormidov (along with his wife Raisa and their daughters) are in danger, as the power of the police is undercut – and, in fact, the police are now identified as enemies of the state. This is only one of the dangers that Leo faces: there is now a ruthless enemy on his trail – as ruthless as Leo was himself in the days of his authority and acclaim.

There is no denying that the bracing innovation of the first book (in what is to be a trilogy) burns at a lower wattage here – that’s inevitable – but Smith is too adroit a writer not to keep us comprehensively gripped (breathless, even, as climax after climax is piled into a crowded narrative). --Barry Forshaw
Gripping and his next book is just as good!, 2010-01-22
His first book, Child 44 was so good I couldn't put it down. I got my hands on this book which nicely follows where he left off and just gets better. - my only dissapointment is that he hasn't written a third!

"I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why."

Most original and potentially most revealing, however, is a Web-based interactive component that allows readers to complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organisation and instantly discover their own top five inborn talents. This device provides a personalised window into the authors' management philosophy which, coupled with subsequent advice, places their suggestions into the kind of practical context that's missing from most similar tomes. "You can't lead a strengths revolution if you don't know how to find, name and develop your own," write Buckingham and Clifton. Their book encourages such introspection while providing knowledgeable guidance for applying its lessons. --Howard Rothman
Now discover your strengths, 2009-02-07
a great read! It really does answer the questions on why we all behave in certain ways. I use it at work with my colleagues and my children at home. It really does pay to buy a copy!

About the Author ~ Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith was born in l979 to a Swedish mother and an English father and was brought up in London where he still lives. He graduated from Cambridge in 2001 and spent a year in Italy on a creative writing scholarship. Tom has worked as a screenwriter for the past five years, including a six-month stint in Phnom Penh storylining Cambodia's first ever soap. .

Exclusive Amazon.co.uk Interview with Tom Rob Smith

What is Child 44 about?

Child 44 is a thriller set in the terror of 1950s Stalinist Russia, a brutal regime that executed anyone who disagreed with its dogma. It proclaimed to be a perfect society. So, when a series of brutal murders take place, no one is permitted to say that these are the work of a serial killer. In a perfect society there can be no crime.

One man, Leo Demidov, a State security agent, a man who has spent his entire career arresting innocent men and women, decides to redeem himself by catching this killer. To do so, he must buck the system, risking his life and the life of everyone he loves.

What inspired you to write it?

It was inspired by a true story, a killer called Andrei Chikatilo who murdered over sixty children, girls, boys, over a period of ten years. Reading about the case I realized this wasn’t a criminal mastermind who’d evaded capture through devious skill. He’d gone on killing for so long because the system refused to admit he even existed. He should’ve been caught on numerous occasions but the prejudices of the State got in the way and, as a result, tragically, many children died. I felt such a tremendous sense of frustration reading about the events that I saw its potential as a piece of fiction.

The real killer murdered in the 1980s. In Child 44 I moved the story back to the 1950s, when the stakes were much higher for someone who dared to risk opposing the State.

Who are your literary influences?

In one sense, any book that I’ve ever read, good or bad.

To answer the question more usefully authors who have directly influenced Child 44 are Graham Greene, Robert Louis Stephenson, Thomas Harris and Arthur Conan-Doyle. Child 44 is as much an adventure as it is a detective story.

If you could recommend just one "must-read book" to anyone, what would it be and why?

There are so many wonderful books. However, connecting to Child 44, I’d say The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Whenever I’ve mentioned the book to people who haven’t read it, they understandably presume it to be melancholy. Much of it is brutal but he is also brilliantly witty, slicing up the absurdities of the regime. It’s an incredible book – or, rather, three books, but there is an abridged edition published by Harvill.

What top tips do you have for anyone looking to write their first book?

There’s a lot of advice already out there. One issue is being able to recognize which advice is good and which is bad, advice that works for one person, might prove disastrous for someone else.