Customer Reviews

Stealing Trinity

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fantastical spy adventure. Alex Braun is a spy who traverses from Berlin to England, to the tumultuous Atlantic Ocean and then the moneyed leisure of Newport, Rhode Island where his Harvard sweetheart, Lydia Cole, is visiting her parents with her buffoon of a husband. He also travels to the vacant desert of New Mexico and J. Robert Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project, and lastly to the middle of the Pacific. Stealing Trinity moves along at a brisk pace, sucking the reader into an exciting WWII tale of espionage, treason, subterfuge and the realization that Germany is no longer fighting a war.

Karl Heinrich, a misguided German Fascist on the Manhattan Project, is ready and willing to impart the secrets of the quiet tribe of university department chairs and Nobel Laureates on Oppenheimer's project in order for the Third Reich to see fruition. Heinrich meets up with Braun (also known as Alex Brown, to his American friends), for their rendezvous, all the while Braun is making plans to sell the secrets to the Russians-and not alerting the fat little Fascist that he's two-timing him.

Simultaneously, Major Michael Thatcher, of the Queen's Military in Great Britain, and Mr. Jones of the FBI, are hot on Braun's trail. But Thatcher has a secret weapon to help him get to Braun quicker-the help of blithe young Lydia Cole, the woman who once loved Alex Brown, but who has now suffered a great loss at his hands.

You won't be able to put Stealing Trinity down. Regardless of how much truth is in this novel, it's a great peek into the history of the A-bomb.

Armchair Interviews says: Amazingly well-written, fast-paced and intriguing.

Ward Larsen's "Stealing Trinity" opens during the waning days of World War II. Nazi officers are planning their escape routes, hoping to flee the country before they are captured. However, there is one loose end that concerns them--"Die Wespe," "a fat little German scientist who is working on the Manhattan Project with the Americans." The officers want to make contact with this spy, since there is a slim chance that this top secret mission may come to fruition. If it does, "those with the knowledge will control the future of our world." The Germans choose as their emissary Alexander Braun, a handsome Wehrmacht captain who grew up in America, attended Harvard, and speaks impeccable English as well as German. Braun's job will be to find Die Wespe and procure the scientific papers that he has been hiding for the sake of the Fatherland.

Braun makes his way to America, but his goal is not to revive the Nazi cause. He intends to enjoy the good life as the pampered husband of Lydia Cole, the woman he left behind before he returned to Germany. Complicating matters for Alex is Major Michael Thatcher, a one-legged British officer who is obsessed with locating and stopping Braun before he can complete his mission.

Larsen's novel contains all of the usual clichés: a race against time, an intrepid hero and spunky heroine, a murderous villain, and espionage that involves not only the Germans but the Russians and Americans, as well. Although the dialogue and plot are, for the most part, pedestrian, Larsen throws in a few good action sequences and some neat twists and turns. "Stealing Trinity" may not be top drawer World War II spy fiction, but it is entertaining enough to satisfy fans of this popular genre.

Other reviewers have more than covered the exciting story told by Larsen, so I will limit my comments to new areas. I am giving the book five stars for plot originality.

Larsen's concept that the Nazis had a spy in the Manhattan Project's design lab at Los Alamos is, as far as I know, a new and intriguing plot. It is now common knowledge that Beria's NKGB penetrated the Manhattan Project and stole most of its secrets, which explained how the Soviet Union managed to detonate a nuclear device, First Lightning in 1949, years before the OSS and our military estimated they could do so.

In STEALING TRINITY, a German physicists and Nazi spy, The Wasp, has managed to compile most, if not all, of the secret data in one suitcase. Germany surrenders as Capt. Alexander Braun, the Nazi agent sent to contact the Los Alamos spy, is landed off the east coast of Long Island. Can Braun reach The Wasp? If he does, then what? The Third Reich is gone. Larsen uses historical fact as the anchor points in his fascinating story.

A British major who specializes in interrogating captured Nazis interviews a captured corporal, who was responsible for destroying top secret files. Before doing so, he took a peek and remembered two words, Manhattan Project. When Major Thatcher makes inquires about the name, red flags are raised and he is told to drop the issue. Exactly the wrong thing to tell a dedicated Nazi hunter, and the hunt begins.

Major Thatcher meets the FBI who is more interested in keeping him from finding out what the Manhattan Project is than finding the spy. For those who have had experience with code word projects and "need to know," the story will have echoes of truth. For others will just be an amusing comedy.

Ward does an excellent job of describing the first nuclear detonation of Gadget, and the Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, without getting in over his or the reader's head in technical details. The USS Indianapolis did deliver the nuclear components and it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

STEALING TRINITY is a good read anchored in historical facts. Fans of W.E.B. Griffin's Men At War series will like this book.

This second book is a worthy partner to his Perfect Assassin. Ward's depth of knowledge and research for the book are most impressive. I have thoroughly enjoyed the first two books and hope he is at work on a third.

Ward Larsen has taken the old plot line of a potential resurgent Nazi regime at the close of WWII and added a great twist.

In the dying days of the Third Reich, Alexander Braun is tasked with contacting the Nazi spy inside the Manhatten project. In the turmoil of the failing Reich, a British Intelligence officer, Michael Thatcher, picks up on Braun's mission.

Thatcher, hindered by the FBI, persues Braun hoping to thwart his mission.

Mr. Larsen has again written a thriller that will make you lose sleep. The story has good character depth and will have you not wanting to put the book down.

With good characters and a twisting plot line, Mr. Larsen has gained a place on my list of preferred authors.

This is another good book from Ward Larsen. In this novel the Nazis
have placed a spy in the Manhattan Project. His code name is Die Wespe
(the Wasp). In the dying days od World War II the Nazis decide to bring Die Wespe home to gather the information that he has ovtained. They find
a sniper on the Russian front named Alexander Braun. He had previously lived in America with the last name Brown. British intelligence picks up on the plan. The Americans refuse to believe them. The British decide to send Major Michael Thatcher to track down Braun. Braun goes to the home of Lydia Cole,an old friend at Harvard. He is found there by Thatcher and
makes his escape. He heads to Los Alamos New Mexico. There he will find
Die Wespe whose real name is Karl Heinrich. He is a leading scientist working on Trinity, the atomic bomb used to end World War II. Braun comes
into possession of the secrets of how to construct the atomic bomb. He meets up with Lavrenti Beria of Russia who wants the secrets for Russia. Meanwhile Thatcher and Lydia Cole are hot on his trail. This leads to a wild ending. This is a very exciting book that you will enjoy.

"Stealing Trinity" by Ward Larsen proved to be one of those novels where you are constantly thinking, "Could this actually happen?" Or, saying to yourself, "Come on now, Mr. Larsen, you have to write something just a teeny bit more plausible to keep me reading. Yes, I know this is fiction, but really now!"

The main thing that a fiction writer must do is create a plot with its various twists and turns that enables you to willingly suspend disbelief, so that you "get into" the story and are not constantly in a state of disbelief about the events in the story. Ward Larson fails. I was constantly distracted by the overwhelming number of basically unbelievable events in the story line, clever though the plot was.

The key bad-guy character, Alexander Braun, miraculously survives completely impossible situations, just as Larsen's main character did in "The Perfect Assassin." My own rule is this: If the author gets the characters into the situation so creatively and cleverly, then he MUST also get the characters out of their dilemma without simply saying, "Somehow ...." (and the next day dawns and everyone has survived). The best/worst example in this book is Braun's swim to the Long Island shore in freezing waters. Not possible.

Larson is a good writer, and the plot is very clever. It's the last gasp of World War II, Spring 1945, and Germany has already lost the war. The atomic bomb is about to be dropped on Hiroshima. Braun (a Nazi sniper) is charged with stealing the atomic bomb secrets in a futile attempt to help the Third Reich survive (in Argentina). He's in cahoots with a German mole within the scientific enclave at Los Alamos. Anthony Thatcher is a British Army sleuth, Braun's nemesis. Lydia Cole is an air-head socialite from New England, Braun's 5-years-ago-but-now-married-ex-honey.

They all meet in various phantasmagoric events, most of which could never happen - even in fiction. The train scene in New Mexico was fun though. The final scene of the three of them aboard a disabled, soon-to-crash military plane over the Pacific Ocean near Guam was the last straw. This was a completely nutty turn of plot events and situations for these hapless main characters.

There are murders galore, flights on military aircraft of the time, near misses and plenty of stick figure characters to bring some life to this unbelievable story. It's kind of a comic book, actually, and so far beyond belief as to stretch the reader's patience. I finished the book more out of protest (so I could write this review) than of sustained interest in it. If you like a thriller about atomic secrets during World War II, read Joseph Kanon's "Los Alamos." It's a far better book.

"Stealing Trinity" is fun and clever and without the slightest bit of literary value. It rates barely a 2 on Amazon's scale.

I had read Ward Larsen's earlier book and really enjoyed it. I picked up Stealing Trinity shortly after. It is refreshing to have an author putting out books without a central character running through them all. Stealing Trinity has different characters and is from a different time frame entirely. It is an interesting bit of historical fiction dealing with the atomic bomb and WWII. The pace is fantastic and the situations are believable. The characters are well developed and engaging. I would recommend this book.

Ward Larsen debut novel "The Perfect Assassin" demonstrated his ability to write a riveting spy novel of the first order. Now in his follow-up novel "Stealing Trinity", he once against presents us with the wit, originality, and innovations of a master storyteller. Germany is collapsing as the Third Reich seeks to activate its deep cover spy within the Manhattan Project. British Intelligence is on to the Nazi plan and dispatches Major Michael Thatcher to track down Hitler's killer agent Alexander Braun before he can wreck havoc with America's nuclear program. Then the first atomic bomb (code named 'Trinity') is tested at Los Alamos on July 16, 1945 and in the days that follow, Thatcher and Braun are destined to a fateful showdown involving control of information that could change the course of the war and of the world. "Stealing Trinity" is a compelling read and a recommended addition to community library suspense/thriller fiction collections. Simply stated, this is the kind of story that Hollywood block buster movies are made from.

This book is written for juveniles. They are the only persons who might believe the story line. Every happenstance was predictable. Including the ending of "boy and girl get together". Don't bother to spend money on this book. The Perfect Assassin is no better. No more Ward Larsen books for me. Will Amazon give a refund?