Thunderstruck by Larson, Erik

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 murder.

With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over 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.

Author: Erik Larson
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Published: 10/24/2006
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.44h x 6.38w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9781400080663

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 06/15/2006 pg. 49
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2006 pg. 666
Booklist 07/01/2006 pg. 5
Library Journal 08/15/2006 pg. 102
Publishers Weekly 08/14/2006 pg. 191
Library Journal 08/01/2006 pg. 102
School Library Journal 10/01/2006 pg. 191
People Weekly 12/18/2006 pg. 51
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2007 pg. 171

About the Author
Erik Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, which examines how Winston Churchill and his "Secret Circle" went about surviving the German air campaign of 1940-41. Larson's The Devil in the White City is set to be a Hulu limited series; his In the Garden of Beasts is under option by Tom Hanks for a feature film. He recently published an audio-original ghost story, No One Goes Alone, which has been optioned by Chernin Entertainment, in association with Netflix. His Thunderstruck has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television for a limited TV series. Larson lives in Manhattan with his wife, who is a writer and retired neonatologist; they have three grown daughters.