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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tickling the dragon, June 16, 2003
This review is from: Los Alamos (Mass Market Paperback)
One would never know it by the title of this book, but it is, in fact, a murder mystery. The title gives away the fact that this isn't just ANY murder mystery. It takes place during the days of the Manhattan Project. A security guard is murdered, and an outsider is "brought in" to discern the situation. The big twist is that Army intelligence does not care so much who murdered the guard. Rather, the $60,000 question is WHY he was whacked. Was he simply mugged, as it would appear? Or did it have something to do with the security of the project? That's what the protagonist, Connolly, is there to find out. And fast! The plot of the book takes a backseat to the historical setting. Kanon does a wonderful job of interweaving the goings-on of Los Alamos. The fictional character of Connolly interacts wonderfully with figures such as General Leslie Groves and the famous physicists involved in the Top-Secret Project. Legendary names such as Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman and a few others enter into the pages of the story. This book that is highly recommended to anyone who is even vaguely interested in the Manhattan Project - whether they like "murder mysteries" or not. The ethics of making & using the bomb, the political polemics of Communism, the almost paranoia for secrecy @ Los Alamos & brief glimpses of the "gadget's" scientists are all enclosed within this book. Although the story is fiction, I can't imagine Los Alamos during the mid-1940s being much different than the way in which Kanon describes it in his novel. I can think of no greater compliment to give a work of historical fiction.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Transcends Genre Fiction, April 19, 2002
This review is from: Los Alamos (Mass Market Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed Los Alamos, reading it into the wee hours. What's more, it's a mystery I can recommend to non-mystery readers because it so thoroughly rejects cliche and convention -- even its spies are unique. Michael Connolly is assigned to Los Alamos to investigate the murder of Karl Bruner,one of the site's security personnel. He could, and is encouraged to, take the easy route and call it case closed when local cops "persuade" someone to confess, but he keeps digging until he roots out the truth - though, to be completely accurate, he never <i>detects</i> the truth. He uncovers the spy by accident -- however, his detecting gives him the information needed to form the correct conclusion when he stumbles on critical information. The mystery is fair -- so fair that you share Connolly's frustration that there are no clues to the spy's collaborators. The entirety of the story, however, transcends mystery novels. There is an excellent romance sub-plot with a more complicated and original woman than you usually encounter in mystery/espionage stories. There is also the wonderfully executed historical backdrop complete with the small details of life that make for a true sense of place. Even minor characters have depths that surprise, such as Mrs. Weber's moments of insight that save her from being a stereotypical gossipy hen. I think the character of the spy is the most intriguing and wonderfully drawn in the book. There is a complexity and subtlety to this character that is rarely seen. In fact, that is where the book really shines, in subtlely facing the moral question of what they were doing there, what gave them permission to seek such destructive power, Kanon never preaches, but he makes you think.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Edgar Romantic Suspense Winner & Deserved It!, January 26, 2001
This review is from: Los Alamos (Mass Market Paperback)
This novel is shelved as a mystery but it is every bit as much, or more, a romance. It is told with the hero's first person voice and is set in atmospheric Los Alamos during WW II during the Manhattan Project. I found the setting of the story compelling. The characters are not all white or black, any of them, but shades of grey instead. This rather fits with the setting since many people have mixed feelings nowadays about both Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project themselves. Los Alamos and the atom bomb project are backdrop and setting, however, to a character driven novel that also provides a murder mystery to solve. For those romance readers eager to shake the virginal heroine with the heart of gold and try a flawed heroine instead, this may be your book. This could have been a big groundbreaking novel in the romance genre had it been shelved or classified there and I'm sorry it wasn't.
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