Stealing Thunder [Paperback]

Peter Millar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2000

Set in 1945 and the present day, this novel provides an evocation of the race to build the atom bomb with an account of a conspiracy turned sour. The book blends fact and the speculations of history so the reader is left wondering whether it really happened.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Millar is a veteran English journalist, and his first novel, a highly complicated political thriller spanning 50 years, has the virtues and faults common to journalists' fiction: lots of authentic details, a gripping "what if" thesis, but a certain woodenness of characterization, and dialogue that is no more than basically serviceable. Eamonn Burke is a cynical, hard-drinking London journalist whose interest is piqued when Sabine, a beautiful young German magazine writer, seeks his experienced help on what looks like a fascinating assignment: was the atom spy Klaus Fuchs really murdered in his exile in East Germany, and if so, why? What exactly were the secrets he purloined from Los Alamos? And what happened to an American bomber reported missing long after WWII hostilities had ceased? Millar has created out of these elements a tale of monumental duplicity that involves the highest levels of the British and U.S. governments, elements of the SS and even Albert Einstein, in the closing days of the war and during the uneasy peace that followed. The action zips around in a variety of exotic and well-rendered locations, including Iceland, as it becomes apparent that someone dangerous is out to prevent Eamonn and Sabine from getting at the truth. There is too much confusing movement back and forth in time and, toward the breakneck finish at a Munich monastery, too many bombshells exploding too close together for the reader to hang on to more than the general gist of the plot. The novel isn't dull, but a more experienced author might have given the story more variety of pace, more moments of relaxation?and a more credible windup.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

British newcomer Millar turns in an alternative history of the Cold War. John Burke is a middle-aged journalist whose specialty is writing on that war. Newly divorced, he's especially vulnerable when Sabine Kotschke, an attractive German journalist, enlists his aid to ferret out the mystery of Klaus Fuchs's death. During wartime, Fuchs was the physicist who smuggled secrets to Russia, enabling the Soviets to build the bomb ten years sooner than they otherwise could have. Fuchs did not regard himself as a spy, but concluded (along with other physicists at Los Alamos) that the secret of the atom was too great a responsibility for any one power to handle. Regardlessas Millar shows in his scenes set in 1944he was branded a spy, only to fall into obscurity again in East Germany. Was he murdered and, if so, for what secret? Burke and Kotschke trace the story from England to New Mexico to Russia. Someones chasing them, and several times they are nearly killed. Burke suspects that Kotschke is not what she seems, but his lust for her, which she toys with, dulls his judgment. He fancies he's James Bond. Meanwhile, events rush ahead of his understanding, until he finds himself searching for a mysterious document called the ``Sunshine Plan''a provisional agreement between the Allies and the Third Reich intended to thwart Soviet ambitions to seize Berlin and stake their claims to postwar Europe. Fuchs, in short, was a red herring, and Burke is the dupe of East German intelligence, itself in competition with right-wing Soviet nationalists to shake up the West with the truth: namely, that the righteous Allies, in forming a pact with a nearly defeated Germany, were as opportunistic as Stalin himself when he made his pact with Hitler. A solid piece of work, less suspenseful than absorbing and intelligent. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 317 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd; First Edition edition (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747545839
• ISBN-13: 978-0747545835
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,117,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, December 11, 1999

By 

Martin Stein (El Granada, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stealing Thunder (Hardcover)

This is a very well researched book with lots of little sub stories tugged in. I liked that the characters were multi-dimensional: no bad guy to kill so that the good can prevail. Being German it was interesting to read how people from other countries might see you. Defininetively not the stuff for hollywood although this could make a great movie. The story takes you from London to New Mexico, Moscow, Iceland and Bavaria. I liked the place descriptions and the feelings of the characters come across very good. Get it!

5.0 out of 5 stars The Nuclear Dance, March 26, 2000

By 

Brian Mcmaster (South Padre Island, Texas) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stealing Thunder (Paperback)

Never mind the millennium. The 1999-2000 season is also the 50th anniversary of the arrest of Klaus Fuchs, the German born Los Alamos physicist who passed on critical pieces of information about the atomic bomb design to the Russians, and apparently single-handedly created the cold war's balance of terror. I say apparently because that has been the official view since 1950. What Peter Millar suggests in Stealing Thunder is that it may not have been so single-handed. Peter Millar writes with the journalist's eye for detail and much of the fun in this book comes from the incidental observations on history and biography and culture that bring these eerie events into focus. For instance the book opens with the Los Alamos scientists and ground crew positioning themselves around ground zero, some taking Edward Teller's suggestion and lathering up with sun tan lotion in preparation for the brightest man-made light that any of them would ever see. If the event were held today in the same spot it is easy to imagine a circle of Winnebagos and lawn chairs, their occupants spreading on the number 50 sunscreen, ready for a good view of the apocalypse. Such is our inability to understand orders of magnitude. Millar spins a very credible yarn, weaving together detail with speculation to produce a cloth which is both fiction and nonfiction. The story proceeds from the ficitonal present to the known past in a series of flashbacks as Millar's alter ego, journalist Eammonn Burke and his cohort and love interest, Sabine Kotzke uncover the layers of truth surrounding Klaus Fuchs. Funded by a lot of German Marks and pursued by a sniper, Eammonn and Sabine follow up on leads provided by an enigmatic diary produced by Fuchs in the last years of his life before a mysterious death. Had he been murdered by East Germany's secret police, the Stasi? If so, why? Even a decade after the Los Alamos project did he still know too much? If so, what? The trail leads from London to Los Alamos to Moscow to Iceland to Bavaria down sleazy back alleys with which Millar seems genuinely familiar. He sets the scene with an economy of description. His snapshot image of Moscow, for instance, is a capitol that smells of warm, wet dog. Having visited Moscow some years ago and worn the winter headgear I was amused to discover that was also my lasting impression of the place. On the down side, the fictional drama of Eammonn and Sabine taking place in the foreground of the present at times seems to overwhelm the real historic drama going on in the background. That, however, may be the bias of a reader who prefers history to Hollywood. These days most of us get our history from dramatized accounts, and when Millar is filling in the gaps in the historical record he is at his best. Who knows what Niels Bohr or Robert Oppenheimer might have said to Klaus Fuchs, sounding him out on his views about the deadly knot that was being tied by a handful of men, but Millar makes the conversation seem quite plausible. Plausible also is Klaus Fuchs baffled German reaction to Oppenheimer's emergence from a window seat coffin at the end of a Los Alamos production of Arsenic and Old Lace. In fact, it is Millar's understanding of the comic subtleties (or lack thereof) in the German mind, that makes his portraits of the historic Fuchs and the fictional Sabine so believable. In some ways Peter Millar's Stealing Thunder is like Oliver Stone's JFK in that it attempts to do too much, to weave together all the known evidence into a blanket conspiracy. But for those who enjoy hearing the evidence and are comfortable with drawing their own conclusions, it may be the perfect format. Don't be surprised then if Millar has you looking at the 1947 Roswell UFO incident from an entirely new perspective. As India and Pakistan begin the nuclear dance that has so preoccupied Russia and the West for fifty years, it is an excellent time to read up on how it all got started and Peter Millar's book Stealing Thunder is an excellent place to start.

5.0 out of 5 stars A great page turner...., March 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Stealing Thunder (Hardcover)

Los Alamos is back in the news at the centre of the latest Chinese spying scandal. Peter Millar, with a ready eye to a good story, exploits our fascination with the race to build the bomb in this cleverly plotted novel . He expertly links the postwar Fuchs atom bomb spy ring at Los Alamos with today's nuclear proliferation in Russia and Germany. The author, a noted British foreign correspondent, expertly weaves a gripping story that brings alive both the past and the present. I hope this is the first of many such novels by Millar, who is a welcome newcomer to the ranks of British thriller writers _following very much in the footsteps of Frederick Forsyth and Gerald Seymour.