Book Report: Thunderstruck

I picked up a book, thinking it was another British mystery. To my surprise, it was more history than mystery. Erik Larson wrote the history of the wireless and the situations surrounding the world of science as if it was a novel.

In Thunderstruck Larson weaves the stories of two Edwardian men, a quiet doctor, Hawley Harvey Crippen,in an uncomfortable marriage and the obsessive inventor, Guglielmo Marconi. According to Larson "the dual stories provided a look at science, superstition and middle-class marriage in the Edwardian era through a very different window."

The book is set in the late 1800's and into the first two decades of the 1900's when scientific discoveries were amazing the European world. The realms of superstition and the supernatural were regularly exposed at the Royal Institute, "Britain's most august scientific bodies." (p. 9)

One story centers on the son of an Italian farmer/ businessman and an Irish woman from the whiskey empire. As one reviewer wrote: "Enter Marconi, a young man of Italian-Irish heritage, who dreamed of harnessing electromagnetic waves for long-distance communication. No matter that his contemporaries considered this idea far-fetched. Marconi's lack of a traditional scientific education, particularly his ignorance of physics, became an advantage as he worked obsessively to achieve his goal. Step by slow step, in an all-consuming process of trial and error, he was able to increase the distance over which he could send messages."

Dr. Crippen, a homeopathic doctor and creator of "remedies," is the protagonist of the other strand of this book. Married to a domineering and flamboyant woman, he continues to yield to her lifestyle and financial demands. Proving a failure on the stage, she cultivates the theater culture off-stage. Dr. Crippen meets a thoughtful and compassionate young woman and a romance develops.

The stories of these 2 men intersect when Dr. Crippen finds himself embroiled in an investigation by Scotland Yard. Marconi's amazing technology spreads the news of a trans-Atlantic police chase.

Thunderstruck leans much more heavily on the history side, and less on the mystery. Erik Larson did his own research for the facts and storyline of this book. (He includes 40 pages of notes at the end.) Much of the conversations and details come directly for letters and journals from Marconi, Crippen and their associates.

I'll close with another comment from another reviewer:
Larson has found compelling characters and a story arc that carries the reader as if it were created for a novel. The combination of the three elements; a carefully-built world, great characters, and a page-turning plot, provide all the thrills of reading a great novel, and something more. Reading 'Thunderstruck', we live in the past, but we cannot escape thinking about the present and the future.