David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "child-44"
The Farm
Tom Rob Smith is the author of CHILD 44, one of the better thrillers I’ve ready in recent years. It was about a Russian serial killer, apparently based on a real case. Since then he’s written three more novels, two of them part of the Russian trilogy: THE SECRET SPEECH and AGENT SIX. I read them all.
THE FARM is a departure for Smith in a big way. According to Smith’s bio he has a Swedish mother and a British father. So does Daniel the protagonist of the new novel. Daniel’s parents have retired to a farm in Sweden, and Daniel is searching for a way to tell them that he’s gay, living with his partner, in Mark’s apartment when he receives a phone call from his father. His mother has been released from a mental hospital and is headed his way. She’s been acting strangely for a while, writing nonsense on the walls of the farm house.
During most of the story, we hear Tilde’s side of the story. She has a satchel in which she keeps the evidence of her descent into so-called madness. She’s positive she can convince Daniel that she’s the victim of a conspiracy to shut her up. We discover that his parents had very little money, having lost most of their savings in the recession, making bad real estate investments. The farm was cheap and Tilde had plans to attract tourists with salmon from the river and produce from a huge vegetable garden, but a land-hungry neighbor, Hakan, wants their land, and Chris, her husband, seems inclined to sell it to him for three times what they paid for it. Hakan has an adopted daughter, Mia, whom he adopted from Africa. Tilde believes Mia was a sex slave, and so were other adopted children in the area. She believes Mia was murdered when she threatened to tell the police. Amazingly she believes Chris is part of the sex ring, as is Hakan, the town mayor, a police detective, and the psychiatrist who treated her. Daniel doubts his gentle and kind father could ever change so much in a matter of months.
So . . . we’re left with the question, “Is Tilde telling the truth or is she delusional?” She seems to have all of her ducks in a row. She insists on presenting her evidence chronologically, and she backs her case up with seemingly concrete evidence. Then Chris calls to say he’s coming to London. Tilde has predicted he would.
As a novelist myself, I have to give credit to Smith’s originality; he doesn’t persist in his bread and butter Russian thriller series. This effort is totally original. I also had no idea what was going to happen in the climax. As an inveterate mystery fan, I usually know long before the denouement. I first chose Smith as an alternative to Martin Cruz Smith, as I was a big GORKY PARK fan, and I’ve read all of Cruz’s novels since, but I wasn’t disappointed to see Tom Rob Smith go in a different direction.
THE FARM is a departure for Smith in a big way. According to Smith’s bio he has a Swedish mother and a British father. So does Daniel the protagonist of the new novel. Daniel’s parents have retired to a farm in Sweden, and Daniel is searching for a way to tell them that he’s gay, living with his partner, in Mark’s apartment when he receives a phone call from his father. His mother has been released from a mental hospital and is headed his way. She’s been acting strangely for a while, writing nonsense on the walls of the farm house.
During most of the story, we hear Tilde’s side of the story. She has a satchel in which she keeps the evidence of her descent into so-called madness. She’s positive she can convince Daniel that she’s the victim of a conspiracy to shut her up. We discover that his parents had very little money, having lost most of their savings in the recession, making bad real estate investments. The farm was cheap and Tilde had plans to attract tourists with salmon from the river and produce from a huge vegetable garden, but a land-hungry neighbor, Hakan, wants their land, and Chris, her husband, seems inclined to sell it to him for three times what they paid for it. Hakan has an adopted daughter, Mia, whom he adopted from Africa. Tilde believes Mia was a sex slave, and so were other adopted children in the area. She believes Mia was murdered when she threatened to tell the police. Amazingly she believes Chris is part of the sex ring, as is Hakan, the town mayor, a police detective, and the psychiatrist who treated her. Daniel doubts his gentle and kind father could ever change so much in a matter of months.
So . . . we’re left with the question, “Is Tilde telling the truth or is she delusional?” She seems to have all of her ducks in a row. She insists on presenting her evidence chronologically, and she backs her case up with seemingly concrete evidence. Then Chris calls to say he’s coming to London. Tilde has predicted he would.
As a novelist myself, I have to give credit to Smith’s originality; he doesn’t persist in his bread and butter Russian thriller series. This effort is totally original. I also had no idea what was going to happen in the climax. As an inveterate mystery fan, I usually know long before the denouement. I first chose Smith as an alternative to Martin Cruz Smith, as I was a big GORKY PARK fan, and I’ve read all of Cruz’s novels since, but I wasn’t disappointed to see Tom Rob Smith go in a different direction.
