Soviet Crime Trilogy

Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith is the fast-paced conclusion to the Child 44 trilogy.  The British author offers the most ambitious book in his trilogy, covering the USSR during the Cold War and its misadventures in Afghanistan with rebel fighters. After his wife's senseless death while on a goodwill trip to the U.S. in 1965, Leo Demidov, former Russian secret police agent, has only one goal--to find and kill the perpetrator. The Soviet government has a different agenda, however, and Leo is forbidden to pursue the matter. Leo's dedication to investigating the truth of his wife's death never falters.  The first volume in the trilogy, Child 44, an edgy, intense portrait of Russia's secret police, was a literary sensation. Child 44 managed to straddle a fine line between well-researched, absorbing historical fiction and an exciitng thriller that would earn the book universal praise, sales of more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and a place on the Man Booker Prize's longlist.  In the second volume, The Secret Speech, set in 1956, three years after the events of Child 44,  Kruschev makes a dramatic  4-hour "secret speech", damning the cult of personality surrounding Stalin.  Some former officers commit suicide and others are the targets of revenge killings. As part of his job as homicide investigator, Demidov starts to investigate the deaths and soon discovers that he too may be a target.  The Secret Speech, was criticized for being too formulaic, too obsessed with action, but thankfully Agent 6 is more like Child 44 - more psychological, with a keen interest in human drama.