Fall of Man in Wilmslow - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848668910 ISBN 13: 9781848668911

Publisher: Quercus Books

Synopsis

June 8, 1954. Alan Turing, the visionary mathematician, is found dead at his home in sleepy Wilmslow, dispatched by a poisoned apple. Taking the case, Detective Constable Leonard Corell quickly learns Turing is a convicted homosexual. Confident it's a suicide, he is nonetheless confounded by official secrecy over Turing's war record. What is more, Turing's sexuality appears to be causing alarm among the intelligence services - could he have been blackmailed by Soviet spies? Stumbling across evidence of Turing's genius, and sensing an escape from a narrow life, Corell soon becomes captivated by Turing's brilliant and revolutionary work, and begins to dig deeper. But in the paranoid, febrile atmosphere of the Cold War, loose cannons cannot be tolerated. As his innocent curiosity fast takes him far out of his depth, Corell realises he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge.

About this title

Review

"Absorbing. . . . Gets the synapses sparking." --The Sunday Telegraph (London)
"Illuminating . . . a rewarding book to read." -The Washington Times
"Lagercrantz has the lingo, the mood and the place down pat." -The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"Winning. . . . A police procedural in which a dogged copper tries to crack a mystery in the teeth of bloody-minded intransigence." -The Independent (London)
"Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web) proves that he can succeed with wholly original work in this multifaceted look at the death of British mathematician Alan Turing in 1954. . . . Memorable prose . . . enhances the complex plot." -Publishers Weekly
"Turing's life and death have become popular subjects, but this novel by a well-known Swedish writer offers an interesting and fresh angle. . . . A persuasive evocation of Turing's genius and of a Britain still suffering under rationing and repression." -The Daily Mail (London)
"Lagercrantz neatly intertwines the facts of Turing's life with the fiction of Corell's quest for knowledge to create an unsettling story of state secrets and sexual hypocrisy." -The Sunday Times (London)
"[A] pensive meditation on the life and death of the mathematician Alan Turing . . . [and a] quietly suggestive depiction of how the investigation affects the investigator. . . . Full of psychological insight." -Kirkus Reviews
"[Lagercrantz] has the faintest whiff of W.G. Sebald; haunted characters determined to pull others down into turbid, oppressive currents of memory and ideas. You are willingly drawn down with them." -The Spectator (London)
"Lagercrantz's fictional variations on this true story make it seem fresh and even more appalling." -The Star (Toronto)

Book Description

A powerful tale of honour, prejudice and the twentieth century's most maltreated hero, by the acclaimed author of The Girl in the Spider's Web

Edition details

• Publisher: Quercus Books
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848668910
• ISBN 13: 9781848668911
• Binding: Paperback