The Secret Speech - Softcover

Tom Rob Smith

3.81

19,111 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446569232 ISBN 13: 9780446569231

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2010

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It is 1956. Three years ago, Leo Demidov moved on from his career as a member of the state security force. As an MGB officer, Leo had been responsible for untold numbers of arrests and interrogations. But as a reward for his heroic service in stopping a killer who had terrorized citizens throughout the country, Leo was granted the authority to establish and run a homicide department in Moscow. Now, he strives to see justice done on behalf of murder victims in the Soviet capital, while at the same time working to build a life with his wife Raisa and their adopted daughters, Zoya and Elena.

Leo's past, however, can not be left behind so easily, and the legacy of his former career--the friends and families of those he had arrested as a state security officer--continues to hound him. Now, a new string of murders in the capital threaten to bring Leo's past crashing into the present, shattering the fragile foundations of his new life in Moscow, and putting his daughter Zoya's life at risk.

Faced with a threat to his family, Leo is launched on a desperate, personal mission that will take him to the harsh Siberian Gulags, to the depths of the hidden criminal underworld, and into the heart of Budapest and the Hungarian uprising. (2009)

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About the Author:

Tom Rob Smith graduated from Cambridge in 2001 and lives in London.

From AudioFile:

Smith's first novel, CHILD 44 (2008), was long-listed for the Booker Prize. This second novel in his planned trilogy continues the chilling drama of life in the Soviet Union just after Khrushchev's purge of Stalin in 1956. Protagonist Leo Demidov is an ex-security officer during a time when it is dangerous to have been one of Stalin's minions. Now working as a homicide detective, Demidov is being threatened by the wife of a Russian Orthodox priest, whom he was responsible for imprisoning in the old days. Now the priest's wife has every intention of killing Demidov's daughter if he does not get her husband released from the gulag. Dennis Boutsikaris's Russian accents are superb. He brings even minor characters to life and portrays sex and age differences credibly. M.C. � AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

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