Just Finished Reading: The Child Thief by Dan Smith (FP: 2012) [355pp] 

Vyriv, Western Ukraine, Winter 1930. Luka knew that no good deed goes unpunished but, despite everything, he had yet to lose his humanity. The man walking towards them looked half dead with exhaustion, his last words being ‘Thank God’ before he collapsed at their feet. But it was the contents of the sled that shocked Luka and his two sons – a pair of children, dead, frozen and one, seemingly, partially butchered. Was the stranger a killer or a rescuer? They’d have to wait until he recovered to answer those pressing questions. Returning to his village, Luka hoped to keep the young bodies secret so as not to worry the others further. But in such a close-knit community such a secret was impossible with predictable consequences. The nightmare seems to be over until Dariya, his niece, fails to return home that night. A search party finds nothing until Luka’s tracking skills show a pair of tracks heading into the forest. One track is clearly Dariya’s, the other is unknown, a stranger's track, an outsider. There is nothing left to do but follow and hope. But this is not a simple case of abduction. The child thief wants to play with his pursuers and he’s very good at the game... 

As with most of these thriller novels, I picked this up because it looked different and interesting. It was certainly that! Peppered throughout with insights into the Soviet occupation and exploitation of Ukraine during Stalinist rule, this was a tense tale of man dealing with an uncomfortable past and looking towards a more troubling future. Luka is an interesting character study – a Russian living in Ukraine with a complicated military history fighting for the Imperial Army, the Communists and then the Ukrainian Anarchists as his disillusion grew with grand ideas. A soldier forced by circumstances to farm, a loving husband wracked by doubt and nightmares, a man more adept with a rifle than a shovel who just wants the best for his family – if only circumstance and history would leave him alone. 

Luka is the core of the novel and carries that weight and responsibility well. The atmosphere is very well crafted, from small village prejudices to Soviet arrogance, from the damage war causes years after the fighting stops to the desire to be left to your own devices no matter how sparse they are. The winter environment is real enough to produce a chill and there is little fault with the overall narrative. The only irritation for me at least was the behaviour of Luka’s teenage sons, but then again they were teenagers so I guess they SHOULD be irritating. This is often not exactly a pleasant or uplifting read but it is consistently a page-turning one. Full of interesting and believable characters in the midst of a threatening situation you do find yourself hoping against hope for those caught in the middle of things and cheering on Luka as he does his best for his family and everyone else he comes into contact with. Definitely recommended. 

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