Agent 6: 3 (Child 44 Trilogy) - Softcover

Smith, Tom Rob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446583081 ISBN 13: 9780446583084

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

THREE DECADES.
TWO MURDERS.
ONE CONSPIRACY.

WHO IS AGENT 6?

Tom Rob Smith's debut, Child 44, was an immediate publishing sensation and marked the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction. Named one of top 100 thrillers of all time by NPR, it hit bestseller lists around the world, won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
In this spellbinding new novel, Tom Rob Smith probes the tenuous border between love and obsession as Leo Demidov struggles to untangle the threads of a devastating conspiracy that shatters everything he holds dear. Deftly capturing the claustrophobic intensity of the Cold War-era Soviet Union, it's at once a heart-pounding thriller and a richly atmospheric novel of extraordinary depth....

AGENT 6

Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a "Peace Tour" to New York City, he is immediately suspicious.

Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal-one that will end in tragedy.

In the horrible aftermath, Leo demands only one thing: to investigate the killer who destroyed his family. His request is summarily denied. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands. It is a quest that will span decades, and take Leo around the world--from Moscow, to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, to the backstreets of New York--in pursuit of the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6.

About this title

Review:

Tom Rob Smith’s debut novel, Child 44, was a considerable success (the youthful Smith began to collect book award nominations by the bushel, before finally bagging the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for 2008). That book’s successor, The Secret Speech, featured the second appearance of the beleaguered former MGB officer Leo Dormidov. Hopes were high for the final volume in the trilogy – and here is Agent 6, the final outing for Leo. So does it satisfactorily conclude the sequence?

In the last book, the time was 1956; Stalin had died, and it was the time of Nikita Khrushchev’s revisionist pronouncements (such as the ‘secret speech’ of the title, in which the Stalinist regime was – for the first time – roundly denounced). Leo Dormidov, his wife Raisa and their daughters are in mortal danger again, because of the new public view of the police as criminals; Leo’s efforts to save his family plunged him into situations of fear and tension. Both books were novel of striking authority (despite the controversial stylistic notion of putting all speech in italics, so that everything appeared over-emphasised). Agent 6, the third and final outing for the conflicted former MGB officer, brings the trilogy of novels to a resounding climax. Leo’s new civilian life with his wife Raisa and his family has acquired equilibrium, but the USSR and the US are still bitter enemies. A visit to the states by Leo on a diplomatic mission has a tragic outcome, and Leo loses everything. Only the grim plains of Afghanistan offer him a way back – or death. Tom Rob Smith has utilised cinematic technique here (not to mention upping the number of suspenseful set pieces), and some will prefer the more complex character building of the first book (still the finest in the sequence), but for most readers this final Leo Dormidov novel will push all the requisite buttons. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"This concluding installment [is] another first-class, must-read crime novel...In [the] first two volumes, Smith brilliantly illuminated the horrors of Stalin's Russia and the Gulag. He also gave readers Leo Demidov, duty-bound, introspective, enduring, and ultimately a figure both tragic and heroic."--Booklist on Agent 6 (starred review)

"A gripping, relentless whodunit plot...Most readers will reach the final page with regret and in awe of Smith's uncompromising vision of the realities of a police state and the toll it takes on those caught in its meshes."
--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"When a trilogy is as unpredictable and riveting as Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 series, set as it is both in the harsh Russian landscape and the dense thicket of the human soul, expectations quickly evaporate in a page-turning frenzy....Smith, a young British screenwriter turned best-selling novelist, has created in Leo Demidov a Kafkaesque modern hero for our times, a good man trapped in a corrupt, manipulative system, forced to choose between loyalties to family, country and conscience. With a cinematographer's eye for settings and historical detail, Smith uses Leo's journey to examine larger issues, especially the political, social and religious systems that both unite and divide us."--BookPage

"Fortified by formidable details of Soviet history, Smith's closing volume of the Leo Demidov trilogy (Child 44; The Secret Speech) knits together iconic characters and elements...Fans of Smith's first two books will avidly seek out the final chapter, though this one stands on its own as well. The Afghan interlude is a searing echo of today's headlines, while the buildup of suspense over several decades is the armchair equivalent of a jaw-jarringly extreme ride at an amusement park."--Library Journal

"Tom Rob Smith secures his place in the pantheon of crime writers with this taut, absorbing conclusion to the trilogy he so brilliantly began with Child 44 and The Secret Speech."--Amazon's Best Books of the Month for January

"Agent 6 has all the elements that made the first two books in the series hits: relentless action, a flawed but fascinating protagonist and a clear-eyed view of the absolute brutality of an authoritarian government."--Dallas Morning News

"In Smith's hands [the] scenes attain a pulse of exhilaration worthy of Dickens by way of Conrad...a broadening of moral scope and thematic richness."--Dennis Lehane for The New York Times Book Review

"His mastery of suspense will make any reader's heart pound."--Financial Times

"Superb ... action-packed, immaculately researched ... pungent and powerful."--Metro

"An intricate game, a history lesson, philosophy in action."--Juxtabook

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0446583081
• ISBN 13: 9780446583084
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544