Thunderstruck

This is the story of a man and his lover who kill the man’s wife in London, then try to escape on a ship to Canada disguised as father and son. Awkward, but doable, unless you have the misfortune of timing your transatlantic cruise with the advent of radio communication.

Thanks to the new "wireless" technology, this couple was unwittingly trapped the moment they stepped aboard. I felt like a bird, hovering above, espying them leaving their quarters to go to dinner, then flapping my wings like mad to get over to the captain and listen in as he reports… show more.

Erik Larson is a master at combining crime and history with perfect pacing and interweaving narratives.

While best known for Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck, the next book in his bibliography, released in 2006, deserves as much acclaim. Larson does a brilliant job of combining the stories of the hunt for murderer Hawley Crippen, and that of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor and electrical engineer, responsible for the wireless telegraph, which revolutionized mass communication.

The real star of the book is Larson’s vivid descriptions that bring to life turn-of-the-century London and the lives of the two men at the center… show more.

The crime discussed in this book was once so famous that Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew titled his autobiography I Caught Crippen even though he’d also been involved with the Jack the Ripper murders. Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American from Michigan—my home state has more than a few notorious citizens—who stood accused of murdering his second wife in London and then fleeing from the police with his mistress. Larson does what he does best, combining a murder case with a history lesson, and weaves in the story of Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of the wireless alongside Crippen’s flight from… show more.