Los Alamos - Softcover

Kanon, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316641286 ISBN 13: 9780316641289

Publisher: Abacus, 1997

Synopsis

In the closing weeks of the war in Europe a security guard on the Manhattan Project is murdered near the Hill. Michael Connolly is sent to Los Alamos from Washington to make sure his death really is the result of a casual homosexual encounter and not connected with espionage. The Nazi regime may be near the end of its reign, but the new enemy of communism has created an atmosphere of paranoia as Oppenheimer and his team come ever closer to concluding the experiment. Connolly is intrigued by the characters on the Hill, by the mixed European background of the victim and, passionately, by the English wife of one of the scientists. He is caught up in the moral dilemmas which the Project is creating, and discovers that there is a difference between professional and personal beliefs.

About this title

Review:

Joseph Kanon is a brave man; for his first novel, Los Alamos, he has chosen the Manhattan Project as a backdrop and Robert J. Oppenheimer as a central character. The year is 1945, and a group of scientists squirreled away in the New Mexico desert are in a frenzied race with the Nazis to finish the first atomic bomb. Inside the fence that surrounds Los Alamos, everything moves according to plan; outside, however, something has gone horribly wrong. A security guard is found murdered in a city park, possibly the victim of a deadly homosexual encounter. But the niggling question remains: is this merely a private tragedy or, more alarmingly, a governmental security breach? To answer that question, the military calls in Michael Connolly, an intelligence officer who quietly continues the slain man's investigation. Connolly's efforts are complicated by reluctant scientists, a local sheriff, and a love affair with Emma Pawlowski, the mysterious wife of one of Los Alamos' scientists.

Eventually, of course, the scientists complete their bomb and Michael Connolly gets his man. If the historically based scenes seem a little flat (what fiction, after all, can compete with the reality of that first mushroom cloud?), the mystery at the heart of Los Alamos is brisk and entertaining, and the moral questions it poses give you something to ponder once the killer is uncovered.

Review:

Well written, nicely constructed, enthralling (TIME OUT)

Brilliantly captures the burgeoning cold-war paranoia (OBSERVER)

Echoes Robert Harri s' ENIGMA (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

This debut could do for the Manhattan Project what ENIGMA did for Bletchley Park. (THE BOOKSELLER)

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0316641286
• ISBN 13: 9780316641289
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416