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Rating:  -
It all starts when Guglielmo Marconi has an idea about inventing a wireless telegraph that would use electromagnetic waves to communicate over long distances. Marconi has an Irish-Italian heritage, and is not very well known.
The book is divided up into two parts. One part focuses on Marconi, his discoveries and rise to fame, and the other focuses on Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a homeopathic doctor that also does work in patent medicines.
Crippen is a small man with large glasses that is near retirement. He has the misfortune of marrying a woman that is nothing short of a wanna be diva. She thinks of herself as an opera singer, but that career fails miserably. Dr. Crippen eventually grows tired of his wife, and as a result he falls in love with a much younger woman. The next events of the book are all about Marconi's invention of the telegraph and Crippen's plan to "remove" his wife from their marriage. Crippen eventually uses a powerful poison known as hyoscine hydrobromide to murder his wife. He then escapes with his new lover on a boat bound for Quebec to try and escape his crime. Marconi's trusty invention, the telegraph, is one of the things that stands in his way. The telegraph allows boats to communicate with each other and talk about information on the whereabouts of Dr. Hawely Harvey Crippen.
Larson demonstrates his ability to take a historical event with many things going on in it, fill it with interesting characters, and shape a masterful story out of it. The first half of the book is used to slowly lead up to a powerful climax that makes reading two or three hundred pages to lead up to it worthwhile. Being caught up in this book is easy to do, especially near the end of this amazing story. Paying attention to every detail is key, because many of them come back in the story and affect it in some way. If you miss a page, you usually miss a lot.
Rating: -
In his opening note, Larson tells the reader that he hopes "to present a fresh portrait of the period 1900 to 1910/ By chronicling the converging stories of a killer and an inventor." The author accomplishes exactly what he intended in this highly researched and detailed account of the lives of Guglielmo Marconi and Hawley Crippen. The back of the book contains over forty pages of sources. I enjoyed this book because it read just like a novel, yet I knew that each action and quote was specifically researched. A slight problem that some people may encounter is the amount of information that Larson so eagerly wants to share about these two individuals. He even mentions that there was so much more that he wanted to share. (Thank you for the consideration Mr. Larson, but I found that there was plenty of information to satisfy any inquiring reader.) While there is a lot of information it is all very clear and understandable.
This book reads just as if it were two seperate stories. I became surprisingly interested in the complex and suspenseful pusuit of obtaining a patent. Marconi's story also portrays the determination and obsession that an individual may experience while working towards a great achievement. Crippen's story is interesting because it shows how an ordinary "nice guy," who doesn't seem to be able to stick up for himself, may become enslaved within the talons of his wife; and the consequences that may occur. Larson offers accurate and insightful narratives of two different people living at the same time.
Larson's tone is very enlightening. It seems like Larson had a fun time researching and writing this book which makes it an enjoyable non-fiction read.
Rating:  -
I have not read Mr. Larsen's first book, which I understand is quite excellent. That reputation is the reason I bought this. I am unafraid of intellectual, historical novels that are well written . . . but this is exhausting. I have yet to finish the 390 page book (plus appendices and notes), but am now 280 pages into it and the plot has yet to develop. I believe there is a murder, and I believe Marconi's wonderful wireless invention will help with the murder case. But the two parallel stories of Marconi's invention and the developing murder -two separate aspects of the novel- have yet to become entwined in any manner. As a matter of fact the major part of the Marconi story is in the late 1890s into 1903 or 1904 at this point . . . and the other plot (the murder mystery) takes place mostly around 1910. As I state in the title here, this very borrring, and the plot has no momentum. A poor effort, and it seems almost formulaic if I undertstand the plot devlopment in his first book correctly.
Rating:  -
A wonderful, exciting, and vivid look at what life may have been like for and in the time of Guglielmo Marconi, (often cited as the inventor of but, more accurately, the first to successfully commercialize wireless communication). The author painstakingly reconstructs many events in Marconi's life and juxtaposes them against the life of the notorious English murderer Dr. H. H. Crippen using public records and letters.
The genius Marconi struggles for years to perfect his invention to the point where it can bridge the Atlantic and successfully compete with the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, making communication with ships making the voyage between the continents possible for the first time in history. Meanwhile, the life of the Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen is presented in shockingly sympathetic detail as the plain-looking and love-starved peddler of patent medicines meets the love of his life and attempts to get away with the murder of his gold-digging and unfaithful wife, culminating in a manhunt like none ever before seen.
The two stories come together as, in a flight that seems a haunting prelude to O. J. Simpson's nationally televised car chase, the entire world hangs on the reprinted wireless updates from the captain of the ship transporting the unsuspecting doctor and his mistress to America as British authorities slowly close the distance in another ship over the weeks of the journey.
Rating:  -
I was thunderstruck by Devil In The White City, so why not Thunderstruck. Using a format that was so effective in Devil, Larson interweaves a story of murder back in the early 1900's with that of Marconi and the introduction of wireless communication.
I found the story of Marconi much more riveting than that of Dr. Crippen and the murder of his wife. I was disappointed in the uneveniess of the two storylines. Unlike in Devil where each of the stories warranted equal analysis and narrative, here the story of Dr. Crippen is undeserving of equal billing with that of Marconi. It is at best an aside to the Marconi story and their nexus is minimal and almost anti-climatic.
I would be interested in a better analysis of the Crippen crime, and its' ultimate trigger, if one exists. While Larson does a great job and is very detailed as to Crippen before the murder, we are left here with too many questions as to his method. I found myself underwhelmed by Crippen's lack of "neatness" as to the crime, and how easily became the obvious suspect. Finally, Larson fails to capture the sensationalism of his trial. Larson raised the bar with Devil and may be unfairly destined to have efforts to duplicate its compelling formula fall short by comparison.
Thunderstruck
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
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