Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

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Wow — what a ride! This novel starts out on a freezing-cold day in Russia in the Thirties, with two starving kids hunting for a skinny cat in the woods, and, in their turn, being hunted themselves. Cut to Moscow 20 years later, and it's still freezing cold, and everybody is absolutely terrified, even Leo — and he's one of Stalin's top police enforcers. One false move and our amphetamine-guzzling, deadeyed hero, will be chucked into the meat grinder of the Gulag. This is a peerless thriller, partly because nearly everybody is both hunter and hunted. When Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, it's terrifying. Is she a traitor? Or is Leo's slimy boss trying to set him up? Tom Rob Smith keeps filling you with dread, almost exorcising this dread — and then plunging you into it again..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

MGB officer Leo is a man who never questions the Party Line. He arrests whomever he is told to arrest. He dismisses the horrific death of a young boy because he is told to, because he believes the Party stance that there can be no murder in Communist Russia. Leo is the perfect soldier of the regime. But suddenly his confidence that everything he does serves a great good is shaken. He is forced to watch a man he knows to be innocent be brutally tortured. And then he is told to arrest his own wife. Leo understands how the State works: Trust and check, but check particularly on those we trust. He faces a stark choice: his wife or his life. And still the killings of children continue...