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The Secret Speech (novel)

The Secret Speech
Secretspeech reissuedpaperback.jpg
Author Tom Rob Smith
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Thriller
Publication date
2009
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages 440
ISBN
Followed by Agent 6

The Secret Speech is the second novel in a trilogy by British author Tom Rob Smith; it was released in April 2009. The book features a repeat appearance of Leo Stepanovich Demidov, the protagonist of Smith's first book, Child 44 (2008). The Secret Speech is a further exploration of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin created. The third novel in the trilogy, Agent 6, was published in 2011.

The title refers to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 address admitting Stalin's crimes. The book continues to develop the theme begun in Smith's first work. Leo's nationalism evolves as a microcosm of the country's social revolution. The book serves as a good illustration of the internal conflict the citizens felt under Stalin's reign.

Over the course of the two books, Smith develops his protagonist's understanding of family. In this second offering, the daughters of slain farmers from the first book return. A conflict develops helping to illustrate to the reader the issues introduced during the release of political prisoners after Stalin's death.

In the three years since the events of Child 44, Leo Demidov has established the Homicide Division within the KGB, which he uses to investigate what he calls "real crimes". While investigating the apparent murder of Suren Moskvin, a Ministry for State Security (MGB) officer, Leo is approached by Nikolai, his former superior officer in the MGB. Nikolai claims that he is being harassed by someone who sends him photographs of people he arrested. Leo, however, is distracted by troubles with his adoptive daughter Zoya—who does not accept him as her father—and writes Nikolai's claims off as the ramblings of a drunkard. When Khrushchev's speech, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences in which Khrushchev denounces the tactics used by Josef Stalin, is distributed for the population to read, Nikolai is consumed by his guilt and kills both himself and his family. When Leo realises that Moskvin also committed suicide after being sent photographs of people he arrested, he deduces that someone is seeking retribution against the government and its agents for their crimes and that he himself is a target.


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