Dan Smith

Dan Smith is a British writer of thrillers for older readers and adventure fiction for younger audiences. The Child Thief is an historical suspense novel set in Soviet Ukraine in 1930, where former soldier Luka leaves his village to search for a missing child. Hachette classifies the book across historical adventure and suspense, while Publishers Weekly records its United States publication by Pegasus Crime and identifies it as Smith’s American debut. Smith’s own author page places the novel among his works for older readers, alongside Dry Season, Dark Horizons, and Red Winter. The frozen landscape and political pressure are not incidental scenery: they limit Luka’s choices and intensify the pursuit at the story’s center. Smith combines a family promise with the dangers of a state-controlled world, giving the chase both personal and historical weight. The Child Thief thus shows how his mature-audience fiction joins propulsive plotting with settings shaped by conflict, hardship, and survival.