Author(s): Erik Larson

Historical Fiction

In 1910, Edwardian England was scandalized by a murder. Mild-mannered American Dr Hawley Crippen had killed his wife and buried some of her remains (her head was never found) in the cellar of their London home. He then went on the run with his pretty young secretary, Ethel Le Neve. A Scotland Yard inspector, already famous for his part in the Ripper investigation, launched an international manhunt for the murderer and his mistress that climaxed in a trans-Atlantic chase between two ocean liners. The chase itself was novel, but what captured the world's imagination was the role played in the drama by a new and little understood technology: the wireless, invented by Guglielmo Marconi. Thanks to Marconi's obsessive fight to perfect his creation, the world was able to learn of events occurring in the middle of the Atlantic as they unfolded - something previously unthinkable. Police, jurists, and newspapermen of the time all agreed that without Marconi's wireless, Crippen would have escaped. But Marconi had struggled to gain acceptance for his invention as a practical technology (many viewed the wireless as a novelty or a supernatural device, while distrust of foreigners remained prevalent in Britain and America). It was the Crippen case that helped convince the world of the inherent potential of Marconi's miracle technology and thus accelerated the wireless revolution that would eventually produce the communication wonders of today: radio, television and cell phones. With its rich cast of colourful characters, THUNDERSTRUCK is Larson doing what he does so irresistibly well: uniting two seemingly disparate yet inextricably linked lives to paint a fascinating, exciting portrait of a hugely significant period, an age on the brink of colossal cultural, social and technological change, while evoking the darker side of human nature.