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Tim O'Brien

299. Tom Rob Smith - Child 44


I didn’t think much of this. A crime thriller of sorts set in Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR.

The problem I had with it is that everyone is systematically betraying everyone to the secret police (including members of the secret police). This meant there was virtually no variety in the plot; all the characters (except perhaps the murderer) were totally self serving; alright this was forced on them circumstantially, but no single character was of any great interest to me; they were all just ciphers to a brutalist system, behaving almost mechanistically.

Perhaps the Soviet Union was like this at the time, but I am sure that a bit more variety could have been squeezed out of the situation??


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