THE SECRET SPEECH by Tom Rob Smith
Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a loyal member of the state security commission in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the nineteen-fifties, was introduced as a conflicted crime investigator in Tom Rob Smith’s first novel, CHILD 44. In that enormously entertaining thriller, Smith provided the backdrop of the authoritarian state that brooks no dissent, where security apparatchiks like Leo Demidov must bend their own judgement regarding others’ innocence and guilt, and must become ruthless instruments of its repression. In THE SECRET SPEECH, Smith’s second novel, it is 1956. Not only has Stalin been dead for three years, but his successor Khrushchev has just given his famous speech of February 1956.
May 21, 2009
В· 
Judi Clark В· 
One Comment
Tags: 1950s, Foreign Detective, Real Event Fiction В· Posted in: Facing History, Russia, Sleuths Series, Thriller/Spy/Caper
SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley
It is 1950. At Buckshaw, her family’s old country estate, wronged Flavia de Luce is out for vengeance and poison is her weapon of choice. This eleven-year-old British girl, whose passion is unquestionably “the central science,” has access to a thoroughly outfitted lab, and plenty of plants in the garden from which to distill gleaming liquids of wicked retribution.
April 28, 2009
В· Judi Clark В· No Comments
Tags: 1950s, Alan Bradley, Feisty, Murder Mystery В· Posted in: Debut Novel, Humorous, Sleuths Series, United Kingdom
