Los Alamos: A Novel - Softcover

Kanon, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440224071 ISBN 13: 9780440224075

Publisher: Island Books, 1998

Synopsis

In a dusty, remote community of secretly constructed buildings and awesome possibility, the world's most brilliant minds have come together. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer's "enchanted campus" of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man, an unraveler of human secrets—a man in search of a killer.

It is the spring of 1945. And Michael Connolly has been sent to Los Alamos to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project. But amid the glimmering cocktail parties and the staggering genius, Connolly will find more than he bargained for. Sleeping in a dead man's bed and making love to another man's wife, Connolly has entered the moral no-man's-land of Los Alamos. For in this place of discovery and secrecy, hope and horror, Connolly is plunged into a shadowy war with a killer—as the world is about to be changed forever....

About this title

Review:

A successful thriller tells an exciting, satisfying story and lets us look at the lives of some interesting people in an environment either totally new or freshly observed. Former publishing executive Joseph Kanon's first novel does all of that, and adds a layer of acute perception about recent history that immediately vaults it up into the hallowed heights of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn--thrillers that deserve space next to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. In the spring of 1945, as the war in Europe is coming to an end, a former police reporter turned Army Intelligence agent named Mike Connolly arrives on the high mesa above Santa Fe, New Mexico, where J. Robert Oppenheimer and a team of scientists are rushing to finish their atomic bomb. A security man has been found battered to death, and Connolly's job is to see if it is anything more than the sordid sex crime it appears to be. Using a devilishly clever mixture of real and fictional characters, Kanon spins out a story that manages to be audacious, persuasive--and totally engrossing.

From the Publisher:

"A well-plotted novel that effortlessly dissolves real people and events into an elegant and moving thriller."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"The suspense novel for all others to beat...[a] must-read."
--The Denver Post

"Compelling...[Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical drama of excitement and high moral seriousness."
--The New York Times

"A magnificent work of fiction...A stunning achievement."
--John Ellis, The Boston Globe

A Main Selection of the Book-Of-The-Month club

About this edition

• Publisher: Island Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0440224071
• ISBN 13: 9780440224075
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 517