Thunderstruck
A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush”In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.
Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect crime.
With his superb narrative skills, Erik Larson guides these parallel narratives toward a relentlessly suspenseful meeting on the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate. Thunderstruck presents a vibrant portrait of an era of séances, science, and fog, inhabited by inventors, magicians, and Scotland Yard detectives, all presided over by the amiable and fun-loving Edward VII as the world slid inevitably toward the first great war of the twentieth century. Gripping from the first page, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Larson's new suspense-spiked history links Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, with Hawley Crippen, a mild-mannered homeopathic doctor in turn-of-the-century London. While Larson tells their stories side by side, most listeners will struggle to find a reason for connecting the two men other than that both lived around the same time and that Goldwyn's plummy voice narrates their lives. Only on the final disc does the logic behind the intertwining of the stories become apparent and the tale gain speed. At this point, the chief inspector of Scotland Yard sets out after Crippen on a transatlantic chase, spurred by the suspicion that he committed a gruesome murder. Larson's account of the iconoclastic Marconi's quest to prove his new technology is less than engaging and Crippen's life before the manhunt was tame. Without a very compelling cast to entertain during Larson's slow, careful buildup, many listeners may not make it to the breathless final third of the book when it finally come alive.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Larson's page-turner juxtaposes scientific intrigue with a notorious murder in London at the turn of the 20th century. It alternates the story of Marconi's quest for the first wireless transatlantic communication amid scientific jealousies and controversies with the tale of a mild-mannered murderer caught as a result of the invention. The eccentric figures include the secretive Marconi and one of his rivals, physicist Oliver Lodge, who believed that he was first to make the discovery, but also insisted that the electromagnetic waves he studied were evidence of the paranormal. The parallel tale recounts the story of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, accused of murdering his volatile, shrewish wife. As he and his unsuspecting lover attempted to escape in disguise to Quebec on a luxury ocean liner, a Scotland Yard detective chased them on a faster boat. Unbeknownst to the couple, the world followed the pursuit through wireless transmissions to newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. A public that had been skeptical of this technology suddenly grasped its power. In an era when wireless has a whole new connotation, young adults interested in the history of scientific discovery will be enthralled with this fascinating account of Marconi and his colleagues' attempts to harness a new technology. And those who enjoy a good mystery will find the unraveling of Dr. Crippen's crime, complete with turn-of-the-century forensics, appealing to the CSI crowd. A thrilling read.–Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post
In July 1910, a sensational news story spread around the world: An American doctor wanted in London for the gruesome murder of his wife -- she was poisoned, flayed, deboned and buried in the couple's basement -- was fleeing justice on an ocean liner headed from Antwerp to Quebec City. He was accompanied by a young woman, his lover, who was disguised as a boy. Another ship, bearing the Scotland Yard inspector in charge of the case, gave chase. Through the new technology of wireless communication, which miraculously allowed ships at sea to communicate with one another and with people on land, newspapers far and wide breathlessly reported the chase as it happened. In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the story of the events leading to this moment.
In his last book, the mega-bestseller The Devil in the White City, Larson perfected the technique of focusing on a nearly forgotten incident of history, in that case the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, and exploding it into a suspenseful chronicle of an entire era, packed with vivid portraits of a huge cast of characters. Larson repeats that design in Thunderstruck. Against a panoply of late-Victorian and Edwardian society and with entertaining verve and colorful style, he weaves together the lives of Hawley Harvey Crippen, murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the genius responsible for wireless technology.
The story begins in 1894. British scientific circles were riveted both by the mysteries of invisible electromagnetic waves and by attempts to prove scientifically the veracity of séances. Enter Marconi, a young man of Italian-Irish heritage, who dreamed of harnessing electromagnetic waves for long-distance communication. No matter that his contemporaries considered this idea far-fetched. Marconi's lack of a traditional scientific education, particularly his ignorance of physics, became an advantage as he worked obsessively to achieve his goal. Step by slow step, in an all-consuming process of trial and error, he was able to increase the distance over which he could send messages. This work wasn't simply theoretical: Ships at sea traveled in silence, cut off from the world around them, oblivious to danger. As the technology improved and became practicable, business bickering ensued, with Marconi forced to fight off competition, struggle to find customers and deal with accusations of patent infringement.
By contrast, Hawley Harvey Crippen was a homeopathic doctor and a purveyor of patent medicines. A small, retiring man with thick glasses, he had the misfortune to marry a voluptuous, flamboyant and domineering woman who fancied herself an opera singer and, when that failed, a music-hall performer. Crippen and his wife moved frequently before settling in London, where his wife continued to exploit him. When he fell deeply in love with a young woman who adored him, he found a solution to his marital predicament in the form of a powerful poison, hyoscine hydrobromide. Larson tells the tale of Crippen and his lover with an eloquent, almost heartbreaking poignancy.
Nonetheless, the narrative style that served Larson well in The Devil in the White City seems to bedevil him here. The constant shifts between his two plot lines become strained and confusing. Years separate Marconi's work from Crippen's machinations, giving the book a jarring, disjointed feel as it bounces back and forth in time. Each section ends with a cliffhanger; soon these feel tiresome rather than suspenseful. Larson seems to share Marconi's obsession with every twist and turn in the development of wireless technology, portraying it in mind-numbing detail. His frequent digressions -- joyful and captivating in The Devil in the White City -- here come to feel like extraneous padding. For no apparent reason except geographic proximity, Larson presents a history of the Bloomsbury group, active years after the events he is describing. The digressions also short-circuit emotional involvement with the story. In the midst of a moving portrayal of Crippen's lovesick mistress, Larson suddenly presents a technical disquisition on the hair curlers she might be using, probably "the Hinde's Patent Brevetee, about three inches long, with a Vulcanite central core and two parallel metal bands." So much for love.
Even so, Larson's gift for rendering an historical era with vibrant tactility and filling it with surprising personalities makes Thunderstruck an irresistible tale. Of London, he writes, "There was fog . . . that left the streets so dark and sinister that children of the poor hired themselves out as torchbearers . . . the light formed around the walkers a shifting wall of gauze, through which other pedestrians appeared with the suddenness of ghosts." He beautifully captures the awe that greeted early wireless transmissions on shipboard: "First-time passengers often seemed mesmerized by the blue spark fired with each touch of the key and the crack of miniature thunder that followed." Larson can be forgiven his obsessions as he restores life to this fascinating, long-lost world.
Reviewed by Lauren Belfer
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Customer Reviews
A delicious book
I found Larson's Thunderstruck a delicious book and I gulped it in just three days. The book intertwists two stories, both non-fiction: Marconi's long and strenuous effort to build and deploy wireless technology and the famous and thrilling 'Northern London Murder' case. Well written and with a lot of historical details, the book is also well documented and has a rich reference list. Already knowing both stories from other sources and books, I noticed a couple of omissions: nothing is said about the journey Dr. Crippen made to Dieppe (France), soon after the murder of his wife, and no mention is made of the papers found in Crippen's pocket, at the time of his arrest, suggesting his intention to suicide. In my opinion both facts are important to understand the killer psychology. A curious oversight can be found at page 312; here Larson says that the Nobel prize was awarded to Guglielmo Marconi for the invention of wireless telegraphy and to the German scientist Karl Ferdinand Braun "for inventing the cathode ray tube". To be correct the 1909 Nobel prize in physics was assigned to Marconi and Braun with the same motivation, i. e. "... in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".
A Captivating Read
I began reading "Thunderstruck" a bit warily, wondering if I was going to have to slog through pages of substantial historical records, without finding a page-turner along the way. I was surprised and relieved on two counts. First, the slogging was minimal and I was impressed with how Larsen presented the history of wireless technology with interest. Second, this is a fascinating and gripping story, truly worth the effort. I got to the point where I didn't want to put it down, totally captivated by the drama.
Larson's story-telling ability is clearly evident and he brilliantly captures emotions and thoroughly develops the characters in this murder mystery. No small task when you're writing about a story that happened in the early 1900s.
This is a great book, definitely recommended.
Not Enough Tension to "Rip My Yarn"
On the cover, it claims "It's ripping yarn..." Can't say that I shared that degree of enthusiasm. It's a good book. Unfortunately, it takes about 310 pages to get exciting.
Larson has a formula for writing stories of famous murders that occured at the same times and locations as big historic events. In "Devil In the White City", the story really flowed, with the exciting tale of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and the simulatenous tale of a serial killer. In "Thunderstruck", the subject is the invention of the wireless business by Marconi, and the simultaineous tale of a meak murderer, Dr. Crippen.
Both books are similar. Larson is very good at conveying what it was like to live in the late 1800's/early 1900's. Larson has done a lot of reasearch. He has used dialogue taken from actual written accounts. He has compiled a huge bibliography of quotes and references about these particular events.
It was the subject matter that didn't work for me. It wasn't a page turner. Trouble was, I never liked Marconi and I also didn't like Dr. Crippen. So that left me without a hero figure (such as Burnham in "Devil"). Without a hero, it became a factual account of a couple of fairly interesting events.
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