Finished: The Secret Speech (Smith) The second book in the Child 44 trilogy with Leo Demidov, the former Russian intelligence officer, and his wife, Raisa, at the center of the action once again. In this story, three years have passed since Leo solved the serial killer mystery in Child 44. At the end of that book he and Raisa, unable to have children of their own, adopted the two daughters,  Zoya and Elena, of a man and wife who had been killed by a more sadistic Russian intelligence officer. Unfortunately for Leo, he had been present and under the command of that officer, and Zoya had witnessed the execution of her parents at the age of 11. She agreed to live with Raisa and Leo for Elena's sake, since it was better than the orphanage, but she harbored a deep hatred for Leo and officers like him in general. Three years later, when The Secret Speech opens, Zoya is 14 and still full of hatred, and Elena is 7. Khrushchev is now the leader of Russia instead of Stalin, and he puts out a document, a transcript of a speech he gives, deriding Stalin, and admitting Stalin's crimes and his barbaric techniques, including those of the Russian intelligence officers that tortured, maimed, killed and imprisoned so many Russian citizens. When this speech is made public, old intelligence officers begin being murdered by a clandestine resistance group. The group is led by a woman, Fraera, who has a huge bone to pick with Leo. Many years before, when Leo was first starting out in the ranks, he was assigned undercover to expose a priest, Lazar, who was still supporting the church, even though Stalin had made it a law that there would be no church. Leo, undercover as Maxim, became Lazar's pupil and nearly like a son to him and his wife. When he got the proof he needed that Lazar was breaking the law, Leo had him exposed and arrested, and sent to a gulag in the far north country. The wife, never forgiving Leo, ends up being Fraera, the lady who is leading the mercenary group! She kidnaps Zoya and Leo must pretend to be a prisoner being sent to the gulag to rescue Lazar and help him escape from prison before she will give Zoya back alive. Of course, Zoya actually likes and approves of Fraera's group and their tactics. They are attacking the very people who killed her parents! She becomes one of them, and even though Leo is successful in bringing Lazar back, an entire political story unfolds in which Leo and Raisa must then travel into Hungary to try and rescue the unwilling Zoya from the clutches of Fraera, who is busy helping ignite a revolution in Hungary. Meanwhile, Zoya falls in love with Malysh, the young teenage right-hand-man of Fraera, and together they actually plan to leave Fraera's group when she becomes too erratic. Feeling betrayed, Fraera locks Malysh and Zoya in with the captured Leo and Raisa as the Russian troops approach the hiding place of her and her followers to squash the revolution. The book is far more detailed and exciting than this brief synopsis! Leo, Raisa, Zoya and Malysh must make their way to safety, and Malysh is killed while pretty much saving the lives of the rest of them. :-( It's the second sad death, as Leo's good friend and associate Timur had been killed in the escapade to release Lazar from the gulag. At the end of the book, Zoya is reluctantly back with Leo, Raisa and Elena, but no so filled with hatred anymore. She saw the lengths that Leo and Raisa would go to to save her...and she saw the insanity of what Fraera was doing too. Anyway....I really enjoyed this book and will most definitely read the third installment.