One may wonder if Tom Rob Smith considered titling this, his second novel after "Child 44," "Gulag 57," since that's one of the settings this epic story will take us into. But, the more cogent question may be why he chose not to keep his naturally gifted detective, Leo Stepanovich Demidov, acting as one. In this followup to his uncovering a serial killer in a land that insists such criminals could not possibly exist there, the atmosphere is suddenly poisoned within a choking mist of political turmoil, making the investigator with state credentials just one more victim of his past.

Certainly, in Leo, we have a central figure whose personal sufferings and vulnerabilities put him in close proximity to the best and most enduring heroes in the genre. And, considering the political and social context in which he operates, he's one or two up on most of them. I mean, neither James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux or Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins have ever been so brutally tortured. Shot at? Yes. But losing their kids, almost losing their legs? No, not yet.

Leo's lot in life in Moscow during the end of Stalin's reign as a sociopathic dictator, and the upheavals his death brings about, stem from Leo's extraordinary personal makeup. Against all odds and the systematic inculcation of repressive values, this man emerges as one of the few enlightened ones. As an ex-KGB agent who ruined people's lives for not espousing required propaganda or who were betrayed by a jealous neighbor, he not only has lived to regret his part in ripping families apart by sending them to the gulags but living also to face their vengeance.

As a result of the successful investigation of the child killer, Leo now leads a secret homicide investigation unit embedded within state security, partnering with his closest friend, Timur Nesterov, who would do anything for him. Together, they study a crime scene that was referred to them by the militia. The victim's throat was savagely cut but Leo suspects that it was done to cover up that Suren Moskvin, the manager of a small academic printing press, had commited suicide, an act that would destory his sons' ambitions. But, what did move the man to commit suicide? The only logical explanation comes later, that it had something to do with what the 55-year old man was printing.

Leo's marriage to Raisa has reached a level of stability even though her true feelings for him are still in doubt. But there's no doubt about the hatred his oldest adopted daughter Zoya feels for him for having had a role in the murder of her and her younger sister Elena's parents. Now, the rebellious beauty addresses him formally and contradicts him at every opportunity. At night, a ritual develops in which she takes a large kitchen knife and stands over sleeping Leo, caught between killing him and thinking that her parents would not want his blood on her hands.

One night, standing there, the phone rings and she flees, dropping the knife, which falls on its point, gouging the wooden floor, and bounces under the bed. Leo discovers it as he dresses to go out in response to a cry for help from a former acquaintance. When he returns, a package is on the doorstep, waiting for him.

Ripping the brown paper, he finds a box. Stamped on it are the words, NOT FOR PRESS. Inside is a printed document, the speech Nikita Kruschev, Stalin's replacement, gave to the twentieth Communist Party Congress, condemning the iron-fisted dictator who preceded him and calling for reform. Distributed to officials at every level, it's heretofore referred to as "the secret speech." Like a virus, it becomes disemminated widely and brings about a volcanic eruption at every level of society. In the speech, Kruschev, the country's new and slightly more humanistic dictator, scorns his predecessor for the destruction he caused with his evil disregard for his people's lives. Kruschev calls for reform and the condemnation of Stalinist principles.

It doesn't produce the desired or expected effect. Kruschev announces that everything is about to change, but change is not in the DNA of the population. It inspires an atmosphere of doubt and fear. The foundation of society is coming undone. Civil war is anticipated, with the possibility of the hens controlling the hen house and decimating the keepers. The idea of who is a traitor is about to be reversed.

Leo is stuck somewhere in the middle of an uncertain morass. He, too, has created a problem he couldn't foresee or that he calculated wrongly. When he pleads with Zoya to understand him better, he tries to remind her that he tried to save her parents and failed and, now, only wants to give her and Elena opportunities well beyond their destinies in a state orphanage. But she's so hardened, she sees him only as a constant reminder of her parents, with him as their murderer.

As he comtemplates what is right anymore, a new and more dangerous enemy appears in his life, another wraith from his past. Zoya is captured by gangsters posing as the KBG. In an attempt to retrieve her, Leo is taken into the custody of a gang, a criminal faternity known as the vory, made up of ex-prisoners of the gulags. A woman he knows as Anisya steps forward and identifies herself to Leo by the name she's known by to her gang. She is Fraere, and she declares that her sole purpose in life is to take away what is dearest to Leo as he once took from her. And Zoya's desire to remain as Fraere's newest gang member starts off that plan with an ache in Leo that smarts, deeply.

This a long and relentlessly harsh journey of epic torture that places the hero into the snake pit of a Siberian gulag where he's subjected to the cruelest revenge any mob could devise and thence, as a political operative of the new state, to the center of the Hungarian uprising in Budapest. Difficult and trying, it's almost too much to endure and a far darker, meaner and more depressing read than "Child 44." If you're reading this you are, at least, forewarned.

If Smith returns Leo to the framework of investigation without so much sadistic punishment and oppresive politics, his next work will be something to look forward to. The one positive outcome for Leo, here, is the clarification of Raisa's feelings and Zoya showing signs of maturity. But, if life gets any more uncontrollable for Leo in the new Russia, we will have to regard the ex-Soviet sleuth as having earned his place in the canon with less sympathy for any of his free world police peers, simply as a function of comparative trials and disappointments they have endured.