Los Alamos

Rating:
Summary: Readable but horrible
Review: Characters are wooden dolls, intrigue is primitive, principals act stupid just to make the action going, and the whole thing is melodramatic to say the least. Second star is for being well written.

Rating:
Summary: Not as grand a mystery as the title would suggest
Review: I read this book because I was always fascinated by the Manhatten Project. I went in with the impression that a grand scheme to kill the project would be uncoverd and that the government had covered it up (See "Snow Wolf" if that is what you are looking for). Los Alamos is certainly not that. While the character development is good and plenty of work goes into determining who done it, I found that this book seemed to drag and in the end was disappointed and let down with who did it and why.

Rating:
Summary: Transcends Genre Fiction
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Los Alamos, reading it into the wee hours. What's more, it's a mystery I can recommend to non-mystery readers because it so thoroughly rejects cliche and convention -- even its spies are unique.

Michael Connolly is assigned to Los Alamos to investigate the murder of Karl Bruner,one of the site's security personnel. He could, and is encouraged to, take the easy route and call it case closed when local cops "persuade" someone to confess, but he keeps digging until he roots out the truth - though, to be completely accurate, he never detects the truth. He uncovers the spy by accident -- however, his detecting gives him the information needed to form the correct conclusion when he stumbles on critical information.

The mystery is fair -- so fair that you share Connolly's frustration that there are no clues to the spy's collaborators. The entirety of the story, however, transcends mystery novels. There is an excellent romance sub-plot with a more complicated and original woman than you usually encounter in mystery/espionage stories. There is also the wonderfully executed historical backdrop complete with the small details of life that make for a true sense of place. Even minor characters have depths that surprise, such as Mrs. Weber's moments of insight that save her from being a stereotypical gossipy hen. I think the character of the spy is the most intriguing and wonderfully drawn in the book. There is a complexity and subtlety to this character that is rarely seen. In fact, that is where the book really shines, in subtlely facing the moral question of what they were doing there, what gave them permission to seek such destructive power, Kanon never preaches, but he makes you think.

Rating:
Summary: Great promise, poor execution
Review: Kanon's novel promises a lot: A murder mystery set in World War II Los Alamos. Spies, the making of the first atomic bomb, and fascinating historical characters combine to make this potentially one of the great mystery/ suspense novels. Alas, it is not. The book collapses into implausibility and irrelevance.
On the subject of implausibility -- hopefully not giving away much of the (weak) plot -- the hero Mike Connolly just happens to meet by coincidence every key figure in the plot early on in the book. This is a hard pill to swallow when one figures that several thousand people worked at Los Alamos. Coincidence happens -- but not over and over and over again.
On the question of irrelevance, one assumes that the book is building up to a dramatic conclusion involving spy rings, national security, and villains of consequence. It's not. It's building up to a sordid little scandal -- unworthy of the setting and the promise of the book. In the words of the old song, "Is that all there is?"
Just to see if Kanon is improving, I took a look at his newer Book, "The Good German." He's hasn't: same weak reliance on coincidence and chance. Don't waste your time reading "Los Alamos" or "The Good German."

Rating:
Summary: Tickling the dragon
Review: One would never know it by the title of this book, but it is, in fact, a murder mystery. The title gives away the fact that this isn't just ANY murder mystery. It takes place during the days of the Manhattan Project. A security guard is murdered, and an outsider is "brought in" to discern the situation.

The big twist is that Army intelligence does not care so much who murdered the guard. Rather, the $60,000 question is WHY he was whacked. Was he simply mugged, as it would appear? Or did it have something to do with the security of the project? That's what the protagonist, Connolly, is there to find out. And fast!

The plot of the book takes a backseat to the historical setting. Kanon does a wonderful job of interweaving the goings-on of Los Alamos. The fictional character of Connolly interacts wonderfully with figures such as General Leslie Groves and the famous physicists involved in the Top-Secret Project. Legendary names such as Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman and a few others enter into the pages of the story.

This book that is highly recommended to anyone who is even vaguely interested in the Manhattan Project - whether they like "murder mysteries" or not. The ethics of making & using the bomb, the political polemics of Communism, the almost paranoia for secrecy @ Los Alamos & brief glimpses of the "gadget's" scientists are all enclosed within this book.

Although the story is fiction, I can't imagine Los Alamos during the mid-1940s being much different than the way in which Kanon describes it in his novel. I can think of no greater compliment to give a work of historical fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: The historical aspects of Los Alamos are very educational although somewhat fictional. The characters are believable, especially the love interest for the main character and the small town sheriff. I have read this book twice and enjoyed it both times. The ending is a little to much of a fade out for my liking, but might symbolize the tensions that lay before us in the cold war. Would make a good movie with the write screenplay and believable actors.

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: Stinks
Review: This book stinks. It's a near identical rip of Fat Man and Little Boy, but with a lame fictional subplot of a murder mystery. The characters are very forgettable, the reason for being for some characters in the story is in doubt (the main character for one, the murder victim for another - a bad combo for a murder mystery). The author basically piggybacked a half baked short story into a pre-existing historical account to flesh it out to novel length, implausably working his main character into recorded historical events. Ignore this book, trust me, you won't care about the murder mystery or the characters. Rent Fat Man and Little Boy, it's far more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Mystery and Murder Amidst the Manhatten Project
Review: This was a debut novel for Joseph Kanon, and it certainly shows a lot of promise. Kanon introduces many of us to a story most of us know little about-- the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Kanon does a fine job of painting a picture of the time and place, as it is Spring 1945 and the scientists and soldiers at Los Alamos are nearing the time of the first test explosions of the atomic bomb (in a passage in the book, Kanon stunning describes the explosion of the A Bomb as scientists and soldiers look on, many not even realizing what the advent of the A Bomb would mean or how it would affect them).

Against this backdrop, a security officer, Karl Bruner, assigned to Los Alamos, has been murdered and Michael Connolly, an intelligence officer, has been sent in to solve it. Connolly must carefully navigate the secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project while attempting to solve the mystery of Bruner's death.

Along the way, he meets such luminaries tied to the project as Robert Oppenheimer (this book made me wish I could find a good biography on him). The conclusion is not totally satisfying as I did not find the resolution of the murder totally convincing, but the journey to that resolution is well worth the trip.

Rating:
Summary: new mexicans are unamused
Review: We start out with a simple murder. A man's been killed, and the circumstances seem to imply a homosexual liason gone wrong. The problem is that the victim is a security officer at the Los Alamos Atomic Weapons Facility, so someone must investigate thoroughly to make sure nothing's compromised. A peacetime newspaperman improbably turned detective shows up to investigate, and thus begins Joseph Kanon's Los Alamos.

Moving from the desert to diners in New York City, the book has an easy sort of grace to it. The characters are fluent, and believeable, and the plot is fast enough to be interesting. Our hero gets a girl, the bad guys are interesting, it's all worthwhile, far as I was concerned. There are also interesting supporting characters, including General Leslie Groves, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and a bunch of scientists. This makes for a very entertaining book.