The Secret Speech, by Tom Rob Smith

A jam-packed schedule during the past two months forced me to choose between reading books and writing about books. Reading is easy. Writing is hard. Guess which option I chose?

In an effort to catch up on the writing end of the equation, I've decided to produce some reviews. Here goes the first one:

The Secret Speech, by Tom Rob Smith

This follow-up to Smith's first book, Child 44 (an award winning best seller), is well worth your time, particularly if you like high suspense in cold climates. It's 1956 in the Soviet Union, Stalin is dead, and Leo Demidov has escaped his former job as a state security officer to pursue a non-political career as a murder investigator for the state. Leo cannot escape the moral consequences of his former job, however. His adopted daughters, Zoya and Elena, cannot forget his complicity in the death of their parents years ago, and his wife, Raisa, still harbors deep emotional reservations about Leo due to the ruthless nature of his former occupation. Indeed, Leo's marriage is on such thin ice that he feels he must conceal a recent discovery: Zoya has been creeping into her adoptive parents' bedroom at night and holding a kitchen knife above Leo's throat while he sleeps, then returning to her bed, filled with ambivalence and rage.

To make matters worse for Leo, Khrushchev has distributed a "secret speech" throughout the Soviet Union denouncing Stalin as a tyrant and openly condemning the atrocities of Stalin's regime. Former secret service officers can no longer rely on unwavering support from the state, and some officers have begun to turn up dead at the hands of their past victims' friends and relatives. Khrushchev's attempt at a new spirit of openness has unleashed a wave of pent up resentment and blood vengeance.

A lot of the sinister charm of Child 44 was the mind-boggling mystery behind a series of child murders and the twisted psychological nature of the killer. The identity of the villain in Smith's second book is never a mystery, and her psychological state isn't overly complex: she's all about revenge with a capital R. The page-turning aspect of The Secret Speech is derived from action, not puzzle solving. An uprising on a convict ship, chases in subterranean sewer systems, gang justice in a Siberian gulag, and riots in the streets of Budapest keep the reader hurtling toward an ending filled with several unexpected twists and turns. Smith has succeeded in writing a straightforward suspense novel that also manages to incorporate a nuanced exploration of the nature of revenge, forgiveness, and personal redemption. I give it a thumbs up.