The murder storyline is much more interesting than the Marconi storyline. In general the stories are not as interestingly interwoven as in his first book, Devil in the White City.

THUNDERSTRUCK by Eric Larson tells two stories, and you won’t know what one has to do with the other until almost the end.

On one hand, there’s Marconi. He’s from Italy but lives in England. Marconi made possible (although that is contested by others from the start) practically instantaneous ship-to-shore communication.

On the other hand is Dr. Crippen. He’s from the United States but lives in England. He killed his wife.

Although THUNDERSTRUCK gets good reviews, I found it tedious. It went on and on about every little inconsequential detail. This was more than I wanted or needed to know.

And Larson knows it. He prefaces the book with a warning that he does this.

Somewhere I read that this book is a page turner. It’s not.

Devil in the White City is much more interesting

Too much detail. Ponderous. None of the characters are people I really want to know more about.

The story about the murder was so familiar, I may have read it before. This time around I was interested in the Marconi saga.

Having read up on the gentleman from New York who supposedly "invented" and experimented with the same techniques as Marconi, this book enlightened me that the conspiracy and pirating that precluded communications. Our history books tell us only a few facts, that we take as the truth, not realizing the treacherous race that the inventors faced.

The book would’ve been wonderful had the author not included every tidbit of minutia that he could think of to make this book long. I was into the book 50% before anything happened to make me want to keep on reading.