Tom Rob Smith’s debut novel, Child 44, was one of the runaway successes of 2008 and his follow up novel is equally gripping. Set in the Soviet Union of 1956, Stalin is dead and when a secret manifesto is released, to the nation, claiming he was a tyrant and murderer and the Soviet Union must transform, cracks that were already forming in this fragile society start to break wide open and who to trust is impossible to know.
From the streets of Moscow to the Siberian gulags this fast paced thriller will keep you hooked on the action from the start. A brilliant look at what might have been.
Moscow, 1956. A society trying to recover from a time when the police were corrupt and the innocent arrested as criminals.
Detective Leo Demidov, former Secret Police Officer, is forced to ask whether the wrongs of the past can ever be forgiven. Trying to solve a series of brutal murders that grip the capital, he must decide if this is savagery or justice.
Quickly it becomes apparent that Leo himself - and his family - are in danger from someone intent on revenge. Desperate to save those he loves, he is offered salvation from an unexpected source - and at a terrible price.
From the streets of Moscow in the throes of political upheaval, to the Siberian gulags and the Hungarian uprising in Budapest, The Secret Speechis a breathtaking novel that confirms Tom Rob Smith as one of the most exciting authors writing today.
Born in 1979 to a Swedish mother and an English father, Tom Rob Smith's bestselling novels in the Child 44 trilogy were international publishing sensations. Among its many honours, Child 44 won the International Thriller Writer Award for Best First Novel, the Galaxy Book Award for Best New Writer, the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the inaugural Desmond Elliot Prize. Child 44 is now a major motion picture starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Gary Oldman.
