Thunderstruck

Erik Larson's Thunderstruck is an account of the discovery of radio telegraphy intertwined with an intriguing murder mystery. Larson describes how Guglielmo Marconi invents a system to transmit signals through the air by a system of trial and error. The story of how a murder was solved and the murderer apprehended joins the story of radio in a case that made international headlines.

Marconi did not have any formal scientific training but was both confident in his understanding and obsessive in his tests. Through long hours of testing he was able to send a signal from one end of his lab to the other. Then he sent a signal over a hill. With his confidence high, he traveled to England to find financial backers. He found an immediate colleague in William Preece of the British Post Office. Preece was both knowledgeable and connected, and he saw promise in Marconi's invention. Unfortunately Preece let an agent of Germany view the invention, so the Germans acquire the technology. Marconi files for a patent for his invention and acquires investors. Yet he struggles to gain the one triumph he seeks, to send signals across the Atlantic wirelessly.

The other story follows Hawley Harvey Crippen, a homeopathic doctor who travels to London with his young vivacious wife to help run a patent medicine business. His wife Belle aspires to be an opera singer, though she soon abandons that idea to pursue a career in vaudeville. Despite his support and affection, she begins to resent him. He is short and soft spoken, while she is outgoing, boisterous, and tempestuous. Their marriage deteriorates, and he finds solace in his young assistant Ethel.

As the 1900's progress, Marconi faces difficulties. His devices are sold to shipping companies to allow ships to communicate while at sea, yet he faces competition from others and regulation from the British government. His investors are reluctant to keep financing his plans. He gets engaged, And his grand venture to prove that he can reliably transmit messages across the Atlantic has constant problems.

Harvey and Belle's problems get worse and she keeps threatening to leave. Her friends are shocked one day to discover that she is gone and Crippen says she has gone back to America. Then he tells them that she has died and begins showing up with Ethel, who wears Belle's clothes and jewelry. Some friends talk to Scotland Yard and an inspector comes to talk to Crippen. Crippen confesses that his wife has left him and he has been trying to avoid a scandal. But when he and Ethel disappear, the inspectors dig further and find gruesome evidence.

The ultimate crossing of these stories occurs on a ship on a trans-Atlantic voyage. With the use of Marconi's technology the captain is able to notify the authorities of his suspicions, and the international manhunt focuses on the ship. The case becomes a sensation, and the wireless device is the star. Larson is meticulous in his details and his digressions. I enjoyed the history of radio, especially how Marconi stumbled into his discovery. It was also interesting to learn about how his ideas were copied and became controversial when others said they had already made the same inventions. The story of Crippen and his wife is also riveting, a crime sensation of the early Twentieth century. A-

Rule 34

Rule 34 is a science fiction novel by Charles Stross that takes place in the near future. The use of 3D printers has become popular, and there is a dark underworld market of unlicensed or illegal blueprints for obscene or immoral creations. Liz is a detective with the Edinburgh police in charge of a task force that monitors the Internet for fantasies that cross the line into forbidden acts. Police work is aided by constant monitoring, a smart online repository for data called CopSpace, and semi-intelligent bots that can do minor police processing. Liz is called to check on a suspicious death and quickly determines that it must be a homicide. The man was found in the bathroom with an enema machine that malfunctioned and somehow poisoned him.

Anwar is a Muslim ex-con trying to make a living in Edinburgh to support his wife and kids. Unfortunately due to his conviction he is prevented from doing any computer work online. He meets with his friend called the Gnome, who gets him involved in a questionable position as an honorary consul for a breakway republic in central Asia. The Gnome insists that there is an angle where they will be able to profit from his position, but the only activity Anwar finds is a case of bread mix that might be used to turn into an illegal industrial product with the right secret ingredient and process. Anwar is a type common to crime novels; he is a common criminal who aspires to the big time, but he is really more of a mark than a con man. Whatever scam he gets involved in ends up getting the better of him.

One mysterious character is referred to as the Toymaker; he uses the alias John Christie, which happens to be the name of a long-dead serial killer. Christie is a sociopath with paranoid delusions that barely kept at bay by the medication he takes. He arrives in Edinburgh to set up a local franchise of the sort of business that Liz would be interested in investigating. However he is stymied by the fact that the first potential business associate he goes to meet is the man who was killed by his enema machine, and the second woman he visits is dead and shrink-wrapped to a mattress full of outdated banknotes. Christie has to manage to not cross the line into insanity while dealing with these setbacks.

Liz finds another suspicious death in Germany that she thinks may be related, and soon many other deaths come to light in the same time frame that are all connected by the fact that home appliance software has malfunctioned in a very specific way. The question comes up of whether these deaths, assuming they are indeed all connected and directed, have behind them a human directing them or an AI. Computer systems have become very sophisticated, though they have only so far only excelled at specific tasks such as driving a car or recognizing a human face.

What's most interesting about this novel is the fast-paced, dense language that Stross uses. There is a bit of Scottish dialect, and I was afraid it was going to be distracted, but thankfully he finds the right balance. The language is full of in-jokes and references that many readers may not appreciate, but I think Stross really knows his audience and hits the right notes. I think I got about 99% of the references, and the important stuff is explained. There are several lines of the plot going, including the central Asian republic's plot to double-cross the investment bankers intending to short its bonds; Liz's ex-lover Dorothy arriving in town to do an audit; and Anwar's job checking out malware for his brother-in-law. There's enough going that you can't tell which is driving the plot and which is just an interesting tangent. In the end, most of it manages to pull together and make sense, though the ending feels just a bit rushed. It's still a fun ride. B+

The Devotion of Suspect X

The Devotion of Suspect X is a Japanese crime novel by Keigo Higashino. The crime in question is the murder of a man named Togashi by his ex-wife Yasuko. Yasuko's neighbor Ishigami hears the struggle and knocks on the door to her apartment, announcing that he can protect Yasuko and her daughter Misato if they will do exactly as he says. Ishigami proceeds to cover up the true nature of the crime and police.

With this setup, the story builds as an intellectual struggle between Ishigami and the police detectives searching for Togashi's killer. The detectives involve their friend Yakawa, a physics professor who knew Ishigami in college. Yukawa takes the opportunity to visit Ishigami and renew their friendship. Ishigami is as puzzled by the murder case as the detectives, and he begins to explore different possibilities. Every conjecture he makes is confounded by Ishigami's and Yasuko's alibis. Since the detectives have no other suspects, they work on breaking apart Yasuko's alibi. Some of the lengths they go to are quite demanding, which shows how much attention they have focused on the case.

Ishigami turns the investigation into his own mystery puzzle. He is a bit unsettled when Yukawa takes an interest in the case but he still deflects any suspicion away from himself and Yasuko. Ishigami's character is drawn well by his actions, illustrating both his intellect and his devotion to Yasuko. He is a math genius who is dissatisfied with his job as a high school teacher and tired of lazy students. Yukawa is a smart professor who encourages his students and enjoys solving mysteries. Yasuko is a stereotypical Japanese woman who is meek and has little power compared to the men in her life.

The twists in the investigation keep the detectives and Yukawa guessing, and they are surprising to the reader also. Every time they think they've found something, Ishigami has already anticipated it. Even right down to the last play, he comes up with options.

This book was better than I was expecting. While the language and characterization are a bit flat, the the developments in the plot are intriguing. Ishigami proves to be an intelligent and creative adversary. Yukawa, using his intuition, is determined to figure out what is wrong with the evidence at hand. I ended up being as surprised at some of the developments as the detectives in the story. B+

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

When reading a book that has had a lot of hype, there is always the question of whether the book lives up to all the hype. A book must be on the bestseller list for a reason, right? I've heard a lot about Stieg Larsson and his novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so I was excited to finally read it.

The book has two main characters. Mikael Blomkvist is a financial journalist who has just been convicted of libel for a story he wrote about a wealthy financial tycoon. He and his married girlfriend Erika Berger run a financial journal called Millennium that is now in trouble of coming apart due to the libel suit and the advertising drying up. Blomkvist gets an offer from a different wealthy tycoon, Henrik Vanger, who is an elderly retired CEO of the Vanger group. The offer is ostensibly to write a history of the Vanger family, but the true goal is to investigate the disappearance of Henrik's great niece Harriet Vanger who vanished from the family island nearly forty years earlier. Blomkvist, who is at the low point of his career, accepts the offer partly because he has little else he can do, and partly because Vanger says that he has valuable information on Wennerstrom, the plaintiff of the libel suit.

The more interesting of the main characters is Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-five year old woman who has a gift for investigations and hacking, despite being a social misfit who is unable to relate to others and a ward of the state. Her distrust of authority, and specifically her refusal to talk to the police, become major points in the story. When her new advocate takes advantage of her, instead of notifying the authorities she takes matters into her own hands and blackmails him. This action looms over the rest of the story as we wonder what else Lisbeth might be capable of. She is clearly outside the mainstream.

Blomkvist studies the case for many months while staying on the Vanger family estate. He becomes friendly (and in one case more so) with some of the Vanger family, and finds that others are hateful. The Vangers have a long and sordid history that includes Nazis. Half of the family hates the other half, and they have to somehow get along enough to manage the family corporation. The history of the family provides the framework for the mystery of Harriet's disappearance; there are many suspects, though most have a sort of alibi since their pictures were taken during an accident on the bridge to the island.

When Blomkvist starts to make progress on the case, Vanger's lawyer calls in Salander to help with the investigation. Blomkvist and Salander soon end up in bed together in an unexciting sex scene. The two of them become a good team, with Blomkvist professional instincts and Salander's street smarts and l33t skills. He seems to take her diffidence (which borders on silent hostility) in stride. She does not know what to make of his sudden appearance or his interest in her life.

As a central character, Blomkvist is a bit too shallow. He is a skilled and driven investigator, which is important to a mystery story, but he seems to have no interests or life outside his work. Family doesn't come into his life. His ex-wife and daughter are only mentioned at the beginning and the end, except when his daughter drops in unexpectedly for to conveniently help with a plot point. I had expected this to develop into something more interesting, perhaps with his daughter being caught up with the same cult, or at least a similar cult, as Harriet, but the daughter disappears into the background and we lose any useful parallels.

Lisbeth is much more interesting, especially given her dark mysterious past (perhaps symbolized by her tattoos) and her unpredictable personality. She certainly takes up good parts of the story, though not enough of it in my opinion. If I were to read the sequels it would be for her. Following and empathizing with a character who is cold and ruthless is difficult, but Larsson pulls it off.

I found the writing to be plain and dull. The dialogue is bland to a fault. The words are all very matter of fact and directed to concluding the plot. The main plot itself is pretty good and unfolds nicely. The events build to a terrifying scene, and then the two detectives proceed to bring the case to a close. But the addition of a hundred pages of denouement which is basically Blomkvist pursuing his revenge on Wennerstrom seems artificial. It's a bit of a false climax after the decades old murder mystery. The two plots work well together, but it feels like the important parts are missing in the last section. The whole is a bit disappointing. B

Drood

Drood is an historical novel by Dan Simmons that builds on the last few years of the life of Charles Dickens and a terrible accident he survived in 1865 in a train wreck. Dickens part of The Mystery of Edwin Drood before he died, and Simmons draws from the same elements of opium, dark underworlds and mesmerism.

The narrator is Wilkie Collins, a writer and sometimes collaborator with Dickens who is a little younger than the esteemed author. Collins is clearly in awe of Dickens and yet full of jealousy. He also suffers from gout and is a liberal user of laudanum (liquid opium) to help his pain. After the train accident, Dickens tells Collins about his encounter at the scene with a mysterious man named Drood. The two of them enlist the help of private detectives to lead them to the underworld beneath London's catacombs. There they find a hidden Chinese opium den that Collins begins to frequent. And Dickens is taken away by two mysterious men to visit Drood alone.

Collins plays cat and mouse with Dickens for a long time on the subject of Drood. He is hesitant to bring it up directly for fear that Dickens will dismiss the subject as mere fantasy, the ramblings of writers inventing creative plots. Collins has his own demons to deal with, including a mysterious green woman who terrorizes him. He also has a double, "the other Wilkie", who appears to him at times. In a central scene in the middle of the book, Drood kidnaps Collins, plants a scarab in his brain, and orders him to write Drood's biography. The other Wilkie begins to write down Collins's text, and Collins discovers that what he's writing is not his own invention but fabulous tales of the Egyptian occult. The interaction of Collins with his double is one of the more fascinating parts of the narrative, giving it a good Gothic ghost story feel. It also strengthens the theory that Collins's narrative is all a part of his delusion.

Collins is a terrible misanthrope, not only visiting a mistress but also kicking out his kept woman after he comes to believe she's interested in another man. He ignores her letters of the abuse she suffers until the final passages of the book. He comes to believe that Dickens has murdered a young man named Dickinson in order to free himself of Drood's scarab, but then he sees Dickinson as part of Drood's cabal. As his mind starts to deteriorate, he takes more and more laudanum, and the value of his take on events becomes more and more questionable.

Simmons does a good job weaving a tale of the occult and mesmerism and making it ambiguous. The story could be an eerie ghost story or a tale of a man's descent into addition and insanity. Collins's jealousy becomes the background for mysterious happenings, all centered around Dickens.

I thought that much of the novel was a little slow and felt like a travelogue. The description of Collins watching one of Dickens's public readings and discovering Drood standing in his place is fascinating, but we don't really need more extensive descriptions of the readings. Simmons goes into much detail about Collins's daily life and how he tracks Dickens, but eventually it gets to be a bit tedious. The best parts are Collins's interactions with Drood or the private detectives. I think the passage where Collins and Dickens discuss the plot of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and argue over the best ending is one of the best parts of the novel. Despite the slow parts, the story is both exciting and at times unnerving. B+