The Child Thief

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What to expect

From out of the whiteness, a dark figure comes...

December, 1930, Ukraine. After the horrors of war, Luka wants a quiet life with his family. His village has, so far, remained hidden from the advancing Soviet brutality - but everything changes the day a stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing a terrible cargo: the bodies of two children. When the villagers' fear turns deadly, they think they have saved themselves. And then a little girl vanishes.

Luka is the only man with the skills to find the stolen child in these frozen lands. And though his toughest enemy is the man he tracks through the harsh winter landscape, his strongest bond is a promise to his family back home...

Read by Nigel Carrington

(p) 2015 Orion Publishing Group

Critics Review

  • Smith succeeds in creating a narrative that is both an engrossing thriller and the story of a man struggling in the grip of historical events that he only partially understands.

    SUNDAY TIMES

  • This is a pursuit thriller of the highest quality, reminiscent of the classic of the genre, Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male.

    IRISH INDEPENDENT

  • Atmospheric pursuit thriller set in 1930s Ukraine in which war veteran Luka stalks his niece’s psychopathic kidnapper across frozen terrain.

    BIG ISSUE

  • Beautifully written thriller about surviving hardships against all odds with honor and humanity.

    NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS

  • Smith is a talented writer who incorporates the forbidding landscape of Ukraine as a central character in the cat-and-mouse chase … the well-constructed plot is nicely complemented by Smith’s adept turn of phrase

    SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

  • A terrific book with an original setting … [it] works both as a compelling thriller, in which readers are drawn into Luka’s confrontation with the mysterious child thief, and as the story of one man entangled in historical events larger than his personal battle against a psychopathic murderer

    BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE

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