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From Publishers Weekly
Larson's new suspense-spiked history links Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, with Hawley Crippen, a mild-mannered homeopathic doctor in turn-of-the-century London. While Larson tells their stories side by side, most listeners will struggle to find a reason for connecting the two men other than that both lived around the same time and that Goldwyn's plummy voice narrates their lives. Only on the final disc does the logic behind the intertwining of the stories become apparent and the tale gain speed. At this point, the chief inspector of Scotland Yard sets out after Crippen on a transatlantic chase, spurred by the suspicion that he committed a gruesome murder. Larson's account of the iconoclastic Marconi's quest to prove his new technology is less than engaging and Crippen's life before the manhunt was tame. Without a very compelling cast to entertain during Larson's slow, careful buildup, many listeners may not make it to the breathless final third of the book when it finally come alive.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Larson's page-turner juxtaposes scientific intrigue with a notorious murder in London at the turn of the 20th century. It alternates the story of Marconi's quest for the first wireless transatlantic communication amid scientific jealousies and controversies with the tale of a mild-mannered murderer caught as a result of the invention. The eccentric figures include the secretive Marconi and one of his rivals, physicist Oliver Lodge, who believed that he was first to make the discovery, but also insisted that the electromagnetic waves he studied were evidence of the paranormal. The parallel tale recounts the story of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, accused of murdering his volatile, shrewish wife. As he and his unsuspecting lover attempted to escape in disguise to Quebec on a luxury ocean liner, a Scotland Yard detective chased them on a faster boat. Unbeknownst to the couple, the world followed the pursuit through wireless transmissions to newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. A public that had been skeptical of this technology suddenly grasped its power. In an era when wireless has a whole new connotation, young adults interested in the history of scientific discovery will be enthralled with this fascinating account of Marconi and his colleagues' attempts to harness a new technology. And those who enjoy a good mystery will find the unraveling of Dr. Crippen's crime, complete with turn-of-the-century forensics, appealing to the CSI crowd. A thrilling read.–Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
In July 1910, a sensational news story spread around the world: An American doctor wanted in London for the gruesome murder of his wife -- she was poisoned, flayed, deboned and buried in the couple's basement -- was fleeing justice on an ocean liner headed from Antwerp to Quebec City. He was accompanied by a young woman, his lover, who was disguised as a boy. Another ship, bearing the Scotland Yard inspector in charge of the case, gave chase. Through the new technology of wireless communication, which miraculously allowed ships at sea to communicate with one another and with people on land, newspapers far and wide breathlessly reported the chase as it happened. In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the story of the events leading to this moment.

In his last book, the mega-bestseller The Devil in the White City, Larson perfected the technique of focusing on a nearly forgotten incident of history, in that case the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, and exploding it into a suspenseful chronicle of an entire era, packed with vivid portraits of a huge cast of characters. Larson repeats that design in Thunderstruck. Against a panoply of late-Victorian and Edwardian society and with entertaining verve and colorful style, he weaves together the lives of Hawley Harvey Crippen, murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the genius responsible for wireless technology.

The story begins in 1894. British scientific circles were riveted both by the mysteries of invisible electromagnetic waves and by attempts to prove scientifically the veracity of séances. 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. This work wasn't simply theoretical: Ships at sea traveled in silence, cut off from the world around them, oblivious to danger. As the technology improved and became practicable, business bickering ensued, with Marconi forced to fight off competition, struggle to find customers and deal with accusations of patent infringement.

By contrast, Hawley Harvey Crippen was a homeopathic doctor and a purveyor of patent medicines. A small, retiring man with thick glasses, he had the misfortune to marry a voluptuous, flamboyant and domineering woman who fancied herself an opera singer and, when that failed, a music-hall performer. Crippen and his wife moved frequently before settling in London, where his wife continued to exploit him. When he fell deeply in love with a young woman who adored him, he found a solution to his marital predicament in the form of a powerful poison, hyoscine hydrobromide. Larson tells the tale of Crippen and his lover with an eloquent, almost heartbreaking poignancy.

Nonetheless, the narrative style that served Larson well in The Devil in the White City seems to bedevil him here. The constant shifts between his two plot lines become strained and confusing. Years separate Marconi's work from Crippen's machinations, giving the book a jarring, disjointed feel as it bounces back and forth in time. Each section ends with a cliffhanger; soon these feel tiresome rather than suspenseful. Larson seems to share Marconi's obsession with every twist and turn in the development of wireless technology, portraying it in mind-numbing detail. His frequent digressions -- joyful and captivating in The Devil in the White City -- here come to feel like extraneous padding. For no apparent reason except geographic proximity, Larson presents a history of the Bloomsbury group, active years after the events he is describing. The digressions also short-circuit emotional involvement with the story. In the midst of a moving portrayal of Crippen's lovesick mistress, Larson suddenly presents a technical disquisition on the hair curlers she might be using, probably "the Hinde's Patent Brevetee, about three inches long, with a Vulcanite central core and two parallel metal bands." So much for love.

Even so, Larson's gift for rendering an historical era with vibrant tactility and filling it with surprising personalities makes Thunderstruck an irresistible tale. Of London, he writes, "There was fog . . . that left the streets so dark and sinister that children of the poor hired themselves out as torchbearers . . . the light formed around the walkers a shifting wall of gauze, through which other pedestrians appeared with the suddenness of ghosts." He beautifully captures the awe that greeted early wireless transmissions on shipboard: "First-time passengers often seemed mesmerized by the blue spark fired with each touch of the key and the crack of miniature thunder that followed." Larson can be forgiven his obsessions as he restores life to this fascinating, long-lost world.

Reviewed by Lauren Belfer
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Thunderstruck
It all starts when Guglielmo Marconi has an idea about inventing a wireless telegraph that would use electromagnetic waves to communicate over long distances. Marconi has an Irish-Italian heritage, and is not very well known.

The book is divided up into two parts. One part focuses on Marconi, his discoveries and rise to fame, and the other focuses on Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a homeopathic doctor that also does work in patent medicines.

Crippen is a small man with large glasses that is near retirement. He has the misfortune of marrying a woman that is nothing short of a wanna be diva. She thinks of herself as an opera singer, but that career fails miserably. Dr. Crippen eventually grows tired of his wife, and as a result he falls in love with a much younger woman. The next events of the book are all about Marconi's invention of the telegraph and Crippen's plan to "remove" his wife from their marriage. Crippen eventually uses a powerful poison known as hyoscine hydrobromide to murder his wife. He then escapes with his new lover on a boat bound for Quebec to try and escape his crime. Marconi's trusty invention, the telegraph, is one of the things that stands in his way. The telegraph allows boats to communicate with each other and talk about information on the whereabouts of Dr. Hawely Harvey Crippen.

Larson demonstrates his ability to take a historical event with many things going on in it, fill it with interesting characters, and shape a masterful story out of it. The first half of the book is used to slowly lead up to a powerful climax that makes reading two or three hundred pages to lead up to it worthwhile. Being caught up in this book is easy to do, especially near the end of this amazing story. Paying attention to every detail is key, because many of them come back in the story and affect it in some way. If you miss a page, you usually miss a lot.

"More than a saga of violence"
In his opening note, Larson tells the reader that he hopes "to present a fresh portrait of the period 1900 to 1910/ By chronicling the converging stories of a killer and an inventor." The author accomplishes exactly what he intended in this highly researched and detailed account of the lives of Guglielmo Marconi and Hawley Crippen. The back of the book contains over forty pages of sources. I enjoyed this book because it read just like a novel, yet I knew that each action and quote was specifically researched. A slight problem that some people may encounter is the amount of information that Larson so eagerly wants to share about these two individuals. He even mentions that there was so much more that he wanted to share. (Thank you for the consideration Mr. Larson, but I found that there was plenty of information to satisfy any inquiring reader.) While there is a lot of information it is all very clear and understandable.

This book reads just as if it were two seperate stories. I became surprisingly interested in the complex and suspenseful pusuit of obtaining a patent. Marconi's story also portrays the determination and obsession that an individual may experience while working towards a great achievement. Crippen's story is interesting because it shows how an ordinary "nice guy," who doesn't seem to be able to stick up for himself, may become enslaved within the talons of his wife; and the consequences that may occur. Larson offers accurate and insightful narratives of two different people living at the same time.

Larson's tone is very enlightening. It seems like Larson had a fun time researching and writing this book which makes it an enjoyable non-fiction read.

Borrring!
I have not read Mr. Larsen's first book, which I understand is quite excellent. That reputation is the reason I bought this. I am unafraid of intellectual, historical novels that are well written . . . but this is exhausting. I have yet to finish the 390 page book (plus appendices and notes), but am now 280 pages into it and the plot has yet to develop. I believe there is a murder, and I believe Marconi's wonderful wireless invention will help with the murder case. But the two parallel stories of Marconi's invention and the developing murder -two separate aspects of the novel- have yet to become entwined in any manner. As a matter of fact the major part of the Marconi story is in the late 1890s into 1903 or 1904 at this point . . . and the other plot (the murder mystery) takes place mostly around 1910. As I state in the title here, this very borrring, and the plot has no momentum. A poor effort, and it seems almost formulaic if I undertstand the plot devlopment in his first book correctly.