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CHILD 44
Tom Rob Smith
Hatchette Book Group USA
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith begins in the coldest of winters in the Ukraine, Soviet Union in January 1933. People are starving everywhere. If they try to leave, they die along the road.
In the village of Chervoy, Maria has made up her mind to die and since she has done that, she realizes that she is going to have to put her cat out to fend for itself. For several years, she has kept her cat hidden from her neighbors for fear that they would take it, kill it, and eat it. You see it is the dead of winter and there is no more food for anyone to eat. Everyone has resorted to cooking the bark of trees or at least chewing on it for nourishment. This cat is the only animal left in the village.
However, she has to wait until dark to do this last deed for they only thing left that she loves. So when it gets too dark for anyone to see, she opens her door and puts the cat out, bidding it a sad goodbye.
The cat decides not to leave and is spotted the next morning by a neighbor boy. A little boy, Pavel, could not believe his eyes! He knows that it was a cat he had spotted that ran behind the tree. He looked around quickly to see if any of the other neighbors had seen it and realized that they had not. Only a few chimneys showed wisps of smoke, only a few houses had light in them. The days were as quiet and as dark as the night.
Pavel ran to his mother, Oksana, and told her excitedly what he had seen. Excitedly she ran to the creek bank, quietly broke a hole in the ice, and holding her breath against the unbearable cold, reached into the icy water. She searched around for a moment afraid she was not going to find her treasure. Finally, she grasped it, a flask with a few small bones it, some that she had been saving for the end when there was even no tree bark to be found.
Oksana helped her son get ready to go find the cat when her youngest son, Andrei entered the room. “Take Andrei”, she said. Pavel really thought this was a mistake because his brother was so young and a little slow but he did. They tracked for what seemed like hours when they finally spotted the cat. Very slowly they went off into opposite directions after daubing blood from Pavel’s finger on the bone that they had tied to a string in the meantime.
They were very quietly, very slowly moving toward the cat, when suddenly a man came running out of the forest and headed straight for Pavel. He grabbed the boy up and turned and ran away into the forest. Andrei chased him until he could no longer run. Upon returning home, his mother began to scream and cry, “He took my son to eat!” All Andrei could do was cry.
So begins the spellbinding tale of Child 44. Smith will have you become a part of the Russian Secret Police as he and his wife begin looking for a mysterious killer. The lunatic only targets young children, ruthlessly murders them, and then does abominable things to their bodies.
You will find yourself shivering with the cold as you, also look for food. Smith
manages to make you feel all the hardships of the Russian people, all the pain of their lives, and the terror they experience as they try to shield their children from the lunatic.
Please begin the book early on a long weekend, because you will certainly not be able to put it down.