Rating: 
Summary: Somber novel about somber spectacular time....
Review: Somber, thoughtful novel seasoned with science (a soupcon) and sex (a pinch). Plot unfolds through characters that could be more interesting. Oppenheimer in particular is a genuine missed opportunity -- shoulda worked harder on him (many people have). A murder mystery.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't get your hopes up
Review: I bought this book expecting to be entralled by the characters and science in and around Los Alamos. Creating "The Bomb" was arguable the greatest collection of genius ever assembled in search of one goal. The thought of a murder connected with this now historic community seemed interesting at first. The first few dozen pages even hinted at a good novel. But..The author goes nowhere. The book drags on for the last 250 pages; if good books are "page turners" this one had the pages glued together. Only the description of Oppie kept it going. Kannon even has a nugget of a good idea by inserting some of the philosophical disputes of the day (communism vs. democracy, nationalism vs. humanism, German vs. the Jews, loyalty vs. self will, etc.) in the death of one of Los Alamos' scientists, but he makes it boring. I can't write a review without mentioning that the insertion of nearly pornographic (and poorly written) sex scenes into this book floored me. Its as if Kannon left his PC on and his 12 year old son came in and wrote some smut into his text. Kannon even makes sex boring. Bottom line, if any engineers or science folks want to try this book because of the rare mixture of science and mystery (like I did), don't waste your time. There are some redeeming qualities, but not many. The science is skimmed over, the characters are stereotypical and one dimensional and the plot never grabs you. The time period information is interesting and so are a FEW of the characters and encounters. But, read something else first.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing book about a fascinating subject.
Review: This book is advertised as a murder mystery implicating the very core of the Manhattan Project. So, anyone interested in 1945 Los Alamos, who also enjoys a good mystery, should love this book - right? Wrong! Despite the publisher's hype, the Manhattan Project and the murder mystery are incidental to the real story. Real story: "average guy" protagonist is sent to Los Alamos to solve murder. He meets Gen. Groves and shakes hands with Oppenheimer. On page 36 he meets "knock out" wife of a foreign scientist. Despite the fact that she has slept with any male who asked on both the European and American continents, she falls instantly and deeply in love with our "average guy" (actually, that ends up to be the book's mystery. The reader remains clueless as to what it is that attracts her to him). After several "bodice ripping" encounters, she announces that "average guy" is the true love she has been searching for. They vow eternal love. Yada, yada, yada. With a little practice, Kanon may give Danielle Steele a run for her money in the romance category, but if it's a mystery set in historical Los Alamos that you're after, save your money.
Rating:
Summary: Good atmosphere, lousy story
Review: Kanon has done a good job of capturing the psychological "feel" of Los Alamos near the end of WW II, and if he'd made more effort to embody the ambiguous moral atmosphere of the Manhattan Project in his characters this could have been the definitive novel about the period. Unfortunately, he chose instead to populate it with cliche figures who are neither interesting nor emotionally involving for the reader (he does somewhat better with the "real" people he includes, but they're not as central to the main story). Again, the plot has possibilities, but his use of them is highly predictable and the ending was rather a letdown. Plus the novel is full of anachronistic errors -- e.g., his characters get from Chaco Canyon directly to Taos without benefit of the Rio Grande bridge, which was built in the 1960's to traverse a previously impassable gorge. I confess to having skimmed large portions of the novel to get through it -- in spite of its bulk, it was just too "thin," plot- and character-wise, to engage me.
Rating: 
Summary: Great setting, characters kinda shallow
Review: Joseph Kanon's excellent writing (not ornate, just smooth) and the fascinating story of Los Alamos itself saved this book from being Yet Another Murder Mystery. Kanon also did a great job painting the characters, though under the surface they didn't seem to actually have any genuine emotions, which seemed rather strange...(that's the mood of all the sex scenes in this book).. with or without any enthusiasm from her. He eventually decides it's true love, apparently because his life without her was so boring and pointless that stealing her from her husband could only be an improvement. Nonetheless, the suspense and the setting were enough to make me neglect all sorts of important things to finish this book. The attempts at moralistic philosophy about the bomb also fell pretty flat, mostly because I couldn't beleive the main character gave a darn about any of that. If you like a good mystery, you'll find one in this book. If you like a little romance and ethics mixed in, you'll find that too (but *very* little). Oh, and if you're after neat details on the science and personalities of Los Alamos, better skip this title. He doesn't really get into that, except for a nice character portrait of Oppenheimer.
Rating:
Summary: Facinating Historical Perspective-A Decent Novel
Review: What makes this book is its historical setting. With a facinating perspective, the reader is able to watch the characters as they take part in the US government's most contraversial project. The novel reads well, with likeable, mostly believable characters and several interesting plot twists. But read this one for its look into wartime America.
Rating: 
Summary: Imagine Ellroy crossed with Hillerman, but really bad.
Review: Los Alamos reads more like a novelization of a screenplay than a novel. The idea - a murder in the Los Alamos nuclear bomb research facility - is clever enough. But the execution is lazy and washed-out. Kanon makes no real effort to bring a vision of the time to life. If it wasn't for the references to "the war" and 1942 Buicks and such, you'd forget where and when the novel was set. The info about the building of the bomb could have come from Encyclopedia Brittanica; the story of the Anasazi from a Park Service pamphlet. As for characters, you've got your hard-boiled loner investigator, your wild-hearted and confused broad, your straight-laced by-the-book supervisor, your blandly affable compadre, the mysterious foreign artist, and so forth. If it was a screenplay, you'd send it to a new pen for a rewrite. Okay, I bought the book in an airport, so what did I expect? But really, how did this bland and silly novel grab so many rapturous cover blurbs?
Rating:
Summary: A waste of my time and money
Review: I started this book with high hopes, the reviews on the cover where very good and i have always enjoyed books with real characters and a true historical background. I was very disappointed, the first 100 or so pages were great but after that the reading became a chore, i did not care about the characters who were 2 dimensional at best, not one of the characters including the main characters and the murder victim ellicited any sympathy or even interest. This book did not entertain, i kept on turning the pages in the hope that it would turn around but it did not. I did not even feel i had learned anything about the Manhatten project.
Rating: 
Summary: This is not Robert Ludlum.
Review: Los Alamos is an extraordinary read. Like a great musician, Joseph Kanon's writing is as remarkable for the notes he chooses not to play as it is for the ones he does. Set in last days of World War II, the novel lives in a world of moral ambiguity which later generations will always have difficulty understanding because we weren't there. The final revelations of the Holocaust, horrifically poignant here, the moral questions raised by the builders of the bomb and the rot of paranoia already setting into the American mindset are laid out before us in a rich banquet of ideas. This reader had to put the book down several times because of the profoundity of understanding and insight the writer brings. However, Kanon does not preach, he is not obvious and he draws no conclusions. He leaves it to the reader to find their own way. To the casual reader expecting a standard "thriller", all of this might actually be a negative against Los Alamos. The plot is almost secondary save for the canny way Kanon uses familiar genre devices to lead us back into a time where of dreams of glory and nightmares of innocence lost sit "cheek to jowl." Here even the murder victim becomes a vehicle for communicating everything from the homophobia of the times to the coming American decline into McCarthyism. The characters all seem be to be searching for their identities as either crusaders or cannibals. Like most of us, they turn out to be a little of both. But it is also the times which create the characters. There is no Oppenheimer if there is no war. There is no love story if there is no murder. No higher truth without an insidious lie. No...well, you get the idea. So, if you're looking for a plot driven page turner, look elsewhere. If, however, you're interested in an eloquent, character driven story which allows a look back to where the seeds of the 1950s, 1960s and even the 1970s were planted, this is thrilling stuff indeed.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT
Review: Kanon's book is entertaining and interesting from a historical perspective. Great character's that are likable and human to a fault. The way the story is written from the perspective of someone new to Los Alamos allows you to see it for the first time throught their eyes. I plan to recommend it to alot of people and I can't wait for Kanon's next book.
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