Los Alamos

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.

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.

This novel is shelved as a mystery but it is every bit as much, or more, a romance. It is told with the hero's first person voice and is set in atmospheric Los Alamos during WW II during the Manhattan Project. I found the setting of the story compelling. The characters are not all white or black, any of them, but shades of grey instead. This rather fits with the setting since many people have mixed feelings nowadays about both Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project themselves. Los Alamos and the atom bomb project are backdrop and setting, however, to a character driven novel that also provides a murder mystery to solve. For those romance readers eager to shake the virginal heroine with the heart of gold and try a flawed heroine instead, this may be your book. This could have been a big groundbreaking novel in the romance genre had it been shelved or classified there and I'm sorry it wasn't.

This is a great read. I found it hard to put down. Mr. Kanon must have done a lot of research to bring this fascinating period of history to life. I found it like a visit to New Mexico in 1945. Especially the pages on Chaco Canyon's Anasazi ruins. I am looking forward to Mr. Kanon's next book, The Prodigal Spy and the novels to follow.

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.