Stealing Thunder - Hardcover

Millar, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747530394 ISBN 13: 9780747530398

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999

Synopsis

On 16th July 1945, the Manhattan Project achieved its ultimate goal - the explosion of the world's first nuclear bomb. But Eamonn Burke could not have anticipated how the shockwaves of that terrifying blast would overwhelm him 50 years later, when he is sent on a mission by a German magazine.

About this title

Review

Described (by Robert Harris) as an "expert blend of nuclear history and international intrigue", Peter Millar's Stealing Thunder is a complex work of fiction which deftly weaves two narratives together. The first, "The Legacy", reconstructs the scene--both heroic and murderous--of the Manhatten Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1944-45: the discovery of the atom bomb which, as Millar notes at the beginning of the book, "for better or worse, shaped the rest of the 20th century". Stealing Thunder is keyed into that ambivalence--"The men who were afraid put on suntan lotion in the dark"--exploring the political and ethical dilemmas of the scientists charged with changing the history of war and weaponry. That dilemma is also the starting point for the novel's contemporary narrative: Eamonn Burke, freelance correspondent-- "Burke was good, the word on the street went, bloody good, in fact"--drawn into investigating the death of Klaus Fuchs (a key player at Los Alamos, and "the bloke who stole the secret of the atom bomb") by an East German reporter, Sabine Kotzke. The (predictable) sexual charge between Burke and Kotzke accompanies the investigative plot which, drawing its protagonists into a world of intrigue and murder, uncovers the history of Los Alamos. --Vicky Lebeau

From the Author

What it's really about:
"Stealing Thunder is a piece of fiction, but it is based substantially on fact. After nearly two decades working as a reporter in Russia, Germany and eastern Europe, I know only too well that fact and fiction are not as distinct from one another as we would like to think. The truth is rarely what we are told. This book is not set during the Cold War, but at its beginning and end. That period in which the world was at loggerheads with itself, like two grandmasters hunched over a chessboard - only with life and death in the balance - is central to its theme. Was it inevitable? Were there alternatives? And would they have been better or worse? Almost all of the characters, from the real spy Klaus Fuchs fifty years ago to the fictional journalist Eamonn Burke today, are caught in a web of their own making: flies who mistake themselves for spiders. It is a web in which the seemingly opposing strands of trust and betrayal, good intentions and evil outcome are revealed as threads of the same fabric. Stealing Thunder deals with truth and lies, and the grey area in between where most of us live: the cusp of history and imagination. It is also, I would like to think, an entertaining read. I hope you agree."

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0747530394
• ISBN 13: 9780747530398
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288