Customer Reviews

Los Alamos

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Kanon's novel promises a lot: A murder mystery set in World War II Los Alamos. Spies, the making of the first atomic bomb, and fascinating historical characters combine to make this potentially one of the great mystery/ suspense novels. Alas, it is not. The book collapses into implausibility and irrelevance.
On the subject of implausibility -- hopefully not giving away much of the (weak) plot -- the hero Mike Connolly just happens to meet by coincidence every key figure in the plot early on in the book. This is a hard pill to swallow when one figures that several thousand people worked at Los Alamos. Coincidence happens -- but not over and over and over again.
On the question of irrelevance, one assumes that the book is building up to a dramatic conclusion involving spy rings, national security, and villains of consequence. It's not. It's building up to a sordid little scandal -- unworthy of the setting and the promise of the book. In the words of the old song, "Is that all there is?"
Just to see if Kanon is improving, I took a look at his newer Book, "The Good German." He's hasn't: same weak reliance on coincidence and chance. Don't waste your time reading "Los Alamos" or "The Good German."

I read quite a lot, including many techno-thrillers, and I know what I like. I liked Los Alamos quite a bit. I don't expect the author to have the science of the Manhattan Project exactly right. It's only the setting for the story, not the story itself. This is not a techno-thriller. It's a murder mystery/romance. The book is written in the first person for the most part, and the author adopts his protagonist's admittedly limited understanding of what the Manhattan Project was all about: building a really powerful weapon that would end the war. That's all Michael Connolly needed to know about what was going on at Loa Alamos in order to do his job of tracking down a murderer and a potential security breach, and that's all the author really gives the reader about the project. The author did an excellent job of setting the period scene, in the spring and oppressive summer of 1945 in and around Los Alamos, NM. I found the main characters engaging, and the historical fiction entertaining. There are no real good guys and bad guys in this book. Everybody in this story wears sort of a gray hat, with competing elements of good and evil within them. I found the book very entertaining, and look forward to reading something else by Mr. Kanon very soon.

This is a great read. I found it hard to put down. Mr. Kanon must have done a lot of research to bring this fascinating period of history to life. I found it like a visit to New Mexico in 1945. Especially the pages on Chaco Canyon's Anasazi ruins. I am looking forward to Mr. Kanon's next book, The Prodigal Spy and the novels to follow.

Los Alamos is an extraordinary read. Like a great musician, Joseph Kanon's writing is as remarkable for the notes he chooses not to play as it is for the ones he does. Set in last days of World War II, the novel lives in a world of moral ambiguity which later generations will always have difficulty understanding because we weren't there.

The final revelations of the Holocaust, horrifically poignant here, the moral questions raised by the builders of the bomb and the rot of paranoia already setting into the American mindset are laid out before us in a rich banquet of ideas. This reader had to put the book down several times because of the profoundity of understanding and insight the writer brings.

However, Kanon does not preach, he is not obvious and he draws no conclusions. He leaves it to the reader to find their own way.

To the casual reader expecting a standard "thriller", all of this might actually be a negative against Los Alamos. The plot is almost secondary save for the canny way Kanon uses familiar genre devices to lead us back into a time where of dreams of glory and nightmares of innocence lost sit "cheek to jowl." Here even the murder victim becomes a vehicle for communicating everything from the homophobia of the times to the coming American decline into McCarthyism.

The characters all seem be to be searching for their identities as either crusaders or cannibals. Like most of us, they turn out to be a little of both. But it is also the times which create the characters. There is no Oppenheimer if there is no war. There is no love story if there is no murder. No higher truth without an insidious lie. No...well, you get the idea.

So, if you're looking for a plot driven page turner, look elsewhere. If, however, you're interested in an eloquent, character driven story which allows a look back to where the seeds of the 1950s, 1960s and even the 1970s were planted, this is thrilling stuff indeed.

"Los Alamos" is a fascinating story of a murder set among the isolation and secrecy of the Los Alamos atomic bomb program at the end of World War II. Though sometimes absorbed in the details, the author builds a suspenseful and very believable look at the paranoia surrounding the program and even manages to give the reader a love story as well. Most enjoyable and a book I would certainly recommend readily !

One of the most interesting stories of 20th century America is the story of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. But it was always subliminal to me, I think because of my loathing of the bomb in particular and war in general. Besides, I was only eight years old in August, 1945. This book brought Los Alamos and all it represents into focus. The murder/spy story is the ostensible reason for the book, but what makes it resonate is its New Mexico setting: Los Alamos, 1945, and all the awful implications of making the "gadget". I live in New Mexico, have been to Los Alamos, and could follow the action of the novel on various maps. It is accurate. I also checked out the Los Alamos National Laboratories web site and could see pictures of some of the characters that are drawn from history, and could get some idea of how the place looked then, how the inhabitants lived, and the stresses they were under.

As is his wont, Kanon begins his tale with slow, measured advances. By the second half the conflicts have mounted, the moral ambiguities are established, and the tension is palpable. Plot, character and setting have combined to make you very glad you bought and read this book.

This book lends interest and intrigue to the hidden city of Los Alamos when the Manhattan Project was underway, and the U.S. military and world's top scientists were involved in creating the scientifically and politically pivotal atomic bomb. Kanon successfully created a tension-filled and frenzied atmosphere surrounding the city and it's top-secret purpose, as well as provided a very believable glimpse into the psyche and everyday lives of several historical figures and great minds involved in the project. But the murder mystery subplot was less than believable and more than predictable, leaving off with the dissatisfactory question `how did these things escape the writers and editors?'

When intelligence officer Connolly was sent to Los Alamos to investigate the murder of one of its security officers, his mission was to not only find the killer, but to prove or disprove a plot that could jeopardize the project's security. This sent him through a labyrinth of double-edged military intelligence, non-cooperative local police, idealistic scientists, a straying wife who sleeps with anyone that gives her escape from her situation of the moment, and high-stakes international espionage.

Connolly solves the mystery, but... What took him so long? Early on, Connolly missed the mark and overlooked the obvious suspect based on the character's introductory description of physical appearance and place and line of work. Along with crime scene details, this info seemed an immediate give away. The romance Connolly had with a scientist's straying wife wreaked of young male fantasy and too conveniently held keys to the investigation. And unfortunately, once the mystery was solved and the story revealed, there remained an inconsistent detail that placed a central character's arrival to the Los Alamos area at two distinct points in time, 1 to 1 ½ years apart. The timing of the character's arrival is key to his or her role in the story... how did this escape the writers and editors? This seems to be the real mystery!