»Thunderstruck

Thunderstruck has the hallmark parallel stories of Larson's tremendously good "The Devil in the White City", about the Chicago Exposition and the cruel murderer H H Holmes, in its interleaving of the advent of wireless radio and the murderer H H Crippen. The foreshadowing becomes a little heavy-handed in this book, and this detracts slightly from the amazing detail. The story of Marconi -- did you know that he won the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics? -- and his obsession with the wireless radio, which matched his detachment from his family -- is fascinating, and dovetails neatly with the emotional decline of "Dr" H H Crippen and his eventual capture via wireless. The capture itself entailed a daring guess at Crippen's escape route and means, a cross-Atlantic chase, and a triumphant success for Scotland Yard.
Thunderstruck is not as compelling a book as was The Devil in the White City, but it is a damn good yarn.