A sumptuous period thriller encompassing themes of power, love, betrayal and murder, “Child 44” is novelist Tom Rob Smith’s fictionalized version of the grisly case that was met with resounding critical and popular acclaim upon publication in 1998. Real-life serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, also known as “The Butcher of Rostov,” was convicted of murdering and mutilating 52 women and children in Soviet Russia in the early 1950s.
Winner of the Crime Writers Association’s CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award and translated into 26 languages, “Child 44” became the first in a trilogy that now includes “The Secret Speech” and “Agent 6.” “The great thing about detective stories and police investigations is they soak up a lot of the society in which they take place,” Smith says. “If you want to understand a world, take a look at the way the police work in that country.”
