This is the third book I’ve read by Erik Larson, and it is by far my least favorite. My wife, who is my primary literary advisor, bought the book and eventually announced she couldn’t finish it. She commented something to the effect that she “…would just have to wait for my review.” So, here it is.

The book attempts to weave the story of the efforts of Guglielmo Marconi to develop the wireless telegraph and the life story of Hawley Harvey Crippen, the man who was convicted of the North Cellar Murder, into a single novel. There is certainly an abundance of details about Marconi, wireless transmissions, and the people in his life. However, I came to dislike him the more I read about him. Crippen is portrayed as a meek and somewhat uninteresting man who is convicted of murdering and mutilating his wife. The wife was outgoing and interesting when with friends and was irritatingly and persistently obnoxious to Crippen when they were alone.

The details finding and investigating the remains of Crippen’s wife are certainly gruesome. There were no bones and the head and limbs were missing. The body was identified based on a scar on a piece of skin.

I enjoy a book more if I can like or at least be interested in the main characters. I didn’t get that with this book. Marconi is described as wanting nothing but the best of everything and seemed disinterested in acknowledging anyone who had helped him. He made many enemies in his quest to develop wireless technology while selfishly enhancing his reputation and showing little interest in his wives or children.

I mentioned that the book attempts to weave the stories of Marconi and Crippen into one novel. Wireless technology did have a role in Crippen’s capture and the two men might have walked in the same areas at some point in their lives. Mr. Larson used his wonderful writing skills to tell the stories, but I found the jumping from one story to the other distracting.  “A Note to Readers” includes an apology for Larson’s “…passion for digression.” I agree with the need for the apology. There was also so much foreshadowing that I gave up trying to remember the person or event promised to be involved in a revelation in a later chapter.

I did laugh out loud at one passage in “Notes and Sources.” Larson explains that he had to make a declaration he would not bring anything that could cause a fire into the New Bodleian Library where he did research for the book. “Grudgingly, I left my blowtorch at the desk.”

There are many tidbits of interesting information scattered through the book. My favorite was that a Greek named Thales discovered that amber would attract items such as hair and lint after it had been rubbed. “The Greek word for amber was electron.”

I fear I’ve failed to distill the book into an interesting review, but I’ve lost interest in trying to add more.