The time is 1953, the place, the Soviet Union. Leo Stepanovich Demdiov is a member of the MGB - the secret police force precursor to the KBG. He has all the privileges of membership - decent apartments for himself and his family; the ability to shop at the special stores actually stocked with goods. He also has the responsibilities - arresting whomever he is directed, no questions asked. He is a man on the rise, and he does his job believing it is for the greater good.The only blemishes on this perfect Cold War Soviet life are the fact that his wife has not borne him children, and that he has a rival on the force, a potential enemy.
Leo is working the case of a potential spy when he is called away to deal with a grieving family of a lower-ranked MGB officer. The man's son has died, and the family believes the child was murdered because the body had been found naked, with the stomach cut open and the mouth stuffed with soil. How could they believe the child had been accidentally killed by the train? Leo doesn't know and doesn't care. He was dispatched to convince the family that it was an accident, period. Murder doesn't happen in the perfect socialist State. To suggest otherwise was to risk being branded a traitor. Unbelieving, the family accepts the official verdict.
The spy case leads Leo into a dangerous dispute with his rival, and what follows is a nightmare of Soviet life. The dispute results in a reversal of Leo's fortunes that exposes him to more horrendous murders of children. Unable to ignore the crimes, Leo throws caution to the wind and searches for a killer no one else believes in. His conscience, once awakened, drives him against the grain of the Soviet state, a path tread at great personal peril.
Child 44, a strange page-turner of a mystery, is a fabulous read despite its bleakness. At every turn, the truth is thwarted and discouraged. It's virtually unbelievable that the crime will ever be solved. Yet the resolution comes, in a psychologically satisfying way.
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