"Child 44" is the debut thriller of 29-year-old Englishman Tom Rob Smith. The novel takes place in the USSR in 1953. Organ worker Lev Demidov is looking for a serial killer guilty of the deaths of several dozen children, and Demidov also has to fight the Soviet system, which (according to the book) does not believe in the existence of such killers. As a basis, the author took the story of the Soviet serial killer A. Chikatilo, and transferred the action to the USSR of the post-war Stalinist period, so that the "atmosphere of fear and paranoia" would give the book even more horror.