Los Alamos

A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The suspense novel for all others to beat . . . [a] must read.”—The Denver Post

WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

It is the spring of 1945, and in a dusty, remote community, the world’s most brilliant minds have come together in secret. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer ’s “enchanted campus” of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man in search of a killer. Michael Connolly has been sent to the middle of nowhere to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project. But amid the glimmering cocktail parties and the staggering genius, Connolly will find more than he bargained for. Sleeping in a dead man’s bed and making love to another man’s wife, Connolly has entered the moral no-man’s-land of Los Alamos. For in this place of brilliance and discovery, hope and horror, Connolly is plunged into a shadowy war with a killer—as the world is about to be changed forever.

Praise for Los Alamos

“A magnificent work of fiction . . . a love story inside a murder mystery inside perhaps the most significant story of the twentieth century: the making of the atomic bomb.”—The Boston Globe

“Compelling . . . [Joseph Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical drama of excitement and high moral seriousness.” —The New York Times 

“Thrilling . . . Kanon writes with the sure hand of a veteran and does a marvelous job.”—The Washington Post Book World ©1997 Joseph Kanon; (P)1997 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, A Division of Random House, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“A magnificent work of fiction . . . It’s a love story inside a murder mystery inside perhaps the most significant story of the 20th century: the making of the atomic bomb. . . . A stunning achievement.”—The Boston Globe

“Compelling . . . [Joseph Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical drama of excitement and high moral seriousness.”—The New York Times

“Thrilling . . . Kanon writes with the sure hand of a veteran and does a marvelous job.”—The Washington Post Book World

“An elegant and moving thriller.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Moving Story

Story works very well. Performance distracts with sometimes muddy acoustics. Overall an excellent audio recording.

Great period piece, first rate narrator

Complex and believable WWII era story with the development of the atomic bomb as a backdrop. The two main characters are engaging and adequately life-like that you care what happens to them. Lots of twists, and I could find no internal contradictions. I am surprised at the low ratings given by others - I suspect they were looking for something else. From my point of view, narrator Edward Herman simply reading a random newspaper story would get a score to at least 3 stars.

stop the music

Narration excellent. However the music in between chapters and towards the end was terrible. Very distracting

Classic Crime Writing and Fine Historical Fiction

I always read historical fiction with a degree of dread that at any moment the work will descend into a superficial gloss of actual events. We're always just happening upon some heretofore unknown figure as he or she is about to make a discovery or take an action that will change the course of humankind. In LOS ALAMOS, Joseph Kanon avoids the pitfalls of the genre by diving headlong into a setting where encounters with titanic figures and momentous events aren't so much coincidental as inevitable.

Set during the final stages of the Manhattan Project, LOS ALAMOS is both classic crime writing and superb historical fiction. Kanon has clearly done extensive research into the personalities and activities that led to the development of the atomic bomb, but he uses that background knowledge judiciously. Rather than being compelled to trot out every fact worth noting about Los Alamos, Kanon respects the reader's intelligence and only uses details that are relevant to the narrative. He introduces people and reports events in a way that suggests that he expects us to have some prior familiarity with them. I'm anything but an expert on the era in question, but his portrait of Robert Oppenheimer as a high-strung, slightly aloof personality feels credible.

IMPORTANT: As many have noted, the sound quality of this recording is execrable, and the music transitions at chapter breaks is horribly distorted. Even so, I would hate for listeners to be turned away from this audiobook because of these limitations. There is a silver lining to the fact that this is an old recording: Edward Herrmann's performance is the kind of commanding voice that we seldom hear anymore. He projects a tone of confident masculinity that today has given way to bombast and bluster. He does very well with accents, the only drawback being that female characters tend to sound a tad like men in drag.

Slow Start but fascinating

Joseph Kanin is an elegant and intelligent writer, not given to blood, gore, or oversexed characters. This one takes off casually but builds to something important halfway there. Excellent ! and Ed Herrmann the narrator, is a lost star.