Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162153 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-24
• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by James L. SwansonIn this splendid, beautifully written followup to his blockbuster thriller, Devil in the White City, Erik Larson again unites the dual stories of two disparate men, one a genius and the other a killer. The genius is Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless communication. The murderer is the notorious Englishman Dr. H.H. Crippen. Scientists had dreamed for centuries of capturing the power of lightning and sending electrical currents through the ether. Yes, the great cable strung across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean could send messages thousands of miles, but the holy grail was a device that could send wireless messages anywhere in the world. Late in the 19th century, Europe's most brilliant theoretical scientists raced to unlock the secret of wireless communication.Guglielmo Marconi, impatient, brash, relentless and in his early 20s, achieved the astonishing breakthrough in September 1895. His English detractors were incredulous. He was a foreigner and, even worse, an Italian! Marconi himself admitted that he was not a great scientist or theorist. Instead, he exemplified the Edisonian model of tedious, endless trial and error.Despite Marconi's achievements, it took a sensational murder to bring unprecedented worldwide attention to his invention. Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a proper, unattractive little man with bulging, bespectacled eyes, possessed an impassioned, love-starved heart. An alchemist and peddler of preposterous patent medicines, he killed his wife, a woman Larson portrays lavishly as a gold-digging, selfish, stage-struck, flirtatious, inattentive, unfaithful clotheshorse. The hapless Crippen endured it all until he found the sympathetic Other Woman and true love. The "North London Cellar Murder" so captured the popular imagination in 1910 that people wrote plays and composed sheet music about it. It wasn't just what Crippen did, but how. How did he obtain the poison crystals, skin her and dispose of all those bones so neatly? The manhunt climaxed with a fantastic sea chase from Europe to Canada, not just by a pursuing vessel but also by invisible waves racing lightning-fast above the ocean. It seemed that all the world knew—except for the doctor and his lover, the prey of dozens of frenetic Marconi wireless transmissions. In addition to writing stylish portraits of all of his main characters, Larson populates his narrative with an irresistible supporting cast. He remains a master of the fact-filled vignette and humorous aside that propel the story forward. Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world, while another's private turmoil made him a symbol of the end of "the great hush" and the first victim of a new era when instant communication, now inescapable, conquered the world. 14-city tour. (Oct.)James L. Swanson's most recent book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, was published by Morrow in February.
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

Mysterious and spellbinding
I so enjoyed The Devil in the White City, a book I read without any awareness of its historical importance. I've waited with aniticpation Larson's next book, but this time I came to it with some expectation. Thunderstruck doesn't disappoint.

If you're looking for a quick and unsubstantial book, Thunderstruct isn't for you. I can even anticipate that some reviewers will nail Larson for the incredible amount of detail he provides, especially in those chapters dealing with Marconi. However, this is Larson's manner and in the end you're glad he provided the indepth treatment.

Thunderstruck, like The Devil in the While City, tells two stories that are inevitably intertwined. First, is Guglielmo Marconi's search for "wireless" telecommunication. Marconi wasn't a scientist. He simply had an idea. With his rudimentary understanding of electromagnetism he believed it possible to communicate over long distances without wires. He was a plodder in the best traditions of Edison. He was, of course successful.

The second story deals with Dr. H. H. Crippen and the murder of his wife, Belle. Demanding, apparently unfaithful (though the Dr. appears to have gotten around a bit), and used to spending large sums of money they couldn't afford, Belle was a weight around Crippens neck. Along with his innocent lover and secretary, Ethel, he flees but is ultimately thwarted by Marconi's invention and a crackerjack Scotland Yard detective. The trans-Atlantic chase, reported via "wireless" communication kept the world's attention. Indeed, the only two people who didn't know they were being chased were the lovers.

Written in Larson's uncompromising style using original sources, Thunderstruck is a wonderful vision into the early years of the twentieth century when technology promised a new world. The story is engaging, well written, organized. Larson is a master storyteller.

Read the book. You'll love it.

history even better than mystery
This is two stories in one. The story of how Marconi struggled to popularize and refine radio technology by trial and error is fascinating, and the story of how mild mannered Harley Crippen became a famous criminal is nearly as interesting, and then the stories merge in a weird but memorable way. And every bit of it is true.

I have to say that Larson puts it all together beautifully. He feeds you the perfect detail at the right time. It's not so much a true crime tale as it is a tale of human nature. It has a certain inevitability without ever boring you. I bet this one will spend a long time on the bestseller list, just like Devil in the White City (his previous book) did.

50% fabulous, 50% boring
I enjoyed half of "Thunderstruck," but the other half of the book was a real dud.

Erik Larson is one of several popular authors whose books always follow the same basic formula. In Larson's case, his books are divided into two separate plots that focus on different characters whose lives ultimately collide in an unexpected way. Also, half of Larson's book generally involve a very detailed process of some sort, while the other half revolves around a crime. When I read "The Devil in the White City," I enjoyed reading all the meticulous details about the planning and architecture of Chicago's World's Fair. However, I don't have a strong interest in science, so the entire portion of "Thunderstruck" devoted to Marconi's development of wireless communication was incredibly dull to me. I'm sure science buffs will find it much more enjoyable, but I thought that pages and pages devoted to things like the types of metals Marconi used to build antennas were incredibly dry and tedious.

However, I really enjoyed the portion of "Thunderstruck" that revolved around the Crippen murder. Those chapters were much more intriguing than the Marconi parts, and I thought Larson did an excellent job of setting up the story. Also, I enjoyed the final chapters of the book where the Marconi/Crippen stories finally overlap. This book is based on actual events that I didn't know much about, and I'm eager to learn more about the Crippen case. (I won't be doing more research on Marconi, though...I'll leave that to the science students out there.)

Overall, Larson is a pretty good storyteller. However, I personally only enjoyed about 50% of this book. I doubt most people will really get into the Marconi chapters unless they have a strong interest in the history and development of scientific processes.