Sunday, September 27, 2015

Thoughts on Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon

I found LOS ALAMOS BY Joseph Kanon too wordy at times yet I continued to read in part out of wondering whether the author could achieve the solution to a difficult mystery without a deus ex machina event.
Kanon confronts Mike Connolly, the protagonist, with a seemingly unsolvable crime with virtually no resources available to him other than his own persistence and skills derived from his pre-war career as a reporter.
The novel is set in the closing days of the Manhattan project, which the scientists involved know will create a weapon with the potential to end civilization as we know it, and possibly eradicate the human species altogether.
In that context tracking down a murderer is small potatoes. Kanon deftly ties a seemingly unrelated killing into the past and future politics involved in the creation of the atomic bomb.
LOS ALAMOS is a novel worth the time of a serious reader just for the pleasure of a mystery resolved with some contrivance but logically.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.