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The Farm
If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.
Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.
Your mother...she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.
Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.
Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.
"Starred Review. [A] superior psychological thriller...Smith keeps the reader guessing up to the powerfully effective resolution that's refreshingly devoid of contrivances."- Publishers Weekly
"Tom Rob Smith has created a truly original and chilling thriller, which makes you ask yourself 'who would I believe'?" - Jojo Moyes, New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You
"Meticulously weaving together literary themes of revenge and madness...this latest offering is a tapestry of fairytales old and new; so unsettling and oppressive that it blurs the distinctions between sanity and madness, reality and fantasy, leaving the reader guessing until the bitter end." - The Independent (UK)
"Chilling, hypnotic and thoroughly compelling. You will not read a better thriller this year." - Mark Billingham, international bestselling author of The Dying Hours
"This is a neatly plotted book full of stories within stories, which gradually unravel to confound our expectations...Smith's twisting, turning novel shows that Scandi crime also retains the ability to surprise and thrill."—The Guardian (UK)
"Structurally innovative and stylistically resonant, The Farm is a remarkable achievement."—Jeffery Deaver, bestselling author of The Kill Room
"'Impossible to put down' has become as overused a thing to say about books as the one saying that the people writing them should stick with what they know. In the case of The Farm, it is close to true (I read it in about three sittings and real life felt like an impertinent interruption whenever I had to put it down)...It is so good, in fact, that you will finish it quickly and then be jealous of anyone who hasn't read it yet." - The Independent (UK)
"Gripping, atmospheric...This absorbing novel thrives on gradually revealing the intimate details of lives, showing how they become hidden not only from strangers, but from those closest to them." - The Observer (UK)
This information about The Farm was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: James Hopkirk
Tom Rob Smith was born in 1979 to a Swedish mother and English father, both antique dealers, and brought up in South London, where he now lives. He started writing plays at school and continued at St. John's, Cambridge. After graduating from Cambridge University in 2001, he completed his studies in Italy, studying creative writing for a year. He also worked as a scriptwriter.
His first novel, Child 44, about a series of child murders in Stalinist Russia, appeared in early 2008. It was awarded the 2008 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the year by the Crime Writer's Association. It was recently a Barnes & Noble recommended book. On July 29, 2008 the book was named on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. In November 2008, he was nominated for the 2008 Costa First Novel ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Tom Rob Smith's Website
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