Devil's in the details

Erik Larson had some issues following up his 2003 smash The Devil in the White City. Admitting that he felt the pressure, he looked around for a new story to tell. But what he came up with—the new, sprawling Thunderstruck (Crown, $24.95)—bears some striking at-first-glance similarities to the book he was trying to put in the past.

Whereas Devil featured serial killer H.H. Holmes, Thunderstruck has wife murderer Hawley Crippen. And where the former used the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago as the historical context, the latter has the ever-expanding matrix of wireless communications and, specifically, its role in the lush travel of ocean liners. Architect Daniel Burnham was Devil’s muse; Thunderstruck has telegraph progenitor Guglielmo Marconi as its creative genius.

“I have to say, after The Devil in the White City, I promised myself I was not going to do a two-part narrative—it was too complex,” says Larson, 52, from his home in Seattle. “But sometimes fate takes your hand and spins you in the opposite direction.”

To his credit, the two books are very different stories. Devil is so firmly rooted in Chicago it’s practically required reading for every resident. Thunderstruck, however, takes place in various European locales, out on the Atlantic Ocean and across to America. While Devil portrayed an age of invention in Chicago that helped form not only the city but an entire school of architecture, Thunderstruck’s eyes are even larger. By tackling oceanic travel, the invention of radiotelegraphy and its uses in a high-profile murder case, Larson has crafted a historical thriller that finds the world at a moment when it’s expanding at a rate previously unseen. And yet, despite his obvious affinity for detailing history, Larson maintains he’s no historian.

“I’m just in this for the stories. It’s not my goal to make any large, world-shattering points about anything I’m writing about,” he says. “I want to be an animator of history, to capture these old stories, bring them to life and tell them in the way they were lived.”

The story is a remarkably simple one, like something out of an old dime-store novel of detection. Crippen, an American, murders his wife and buries her remains in their London home, all because he’s fallen for a younger woman. When he races from the authorities, it’s up to Marconi’s quickly improving telegraph to help various police forces communicate and track the murderer. There’s also an ocean liner speed chase that’s more fun than it should be.

Larson claims it was the mystery element that first drew him to the story, as a kid.

“My mother, who was a mystery junkie, told me about the Crippen case,” he says. “I didn’t remember any of the details, but I was left with the impression of how romantic she thought the whole thing was.”

In the end, it’s the same sort of fascination with historical personalities and minutiae that makes Thunderstruck a slow-rolling thriller, à la Devil. But it begs the question: Is Larson crafting his own niche?

“When I started working, I was sort of appalled I was doing a book about murder and a different sort of thing that intersects with it,” he laughs. “This is not an effort to make a genre. I’ve sworn to my agent, no murder in the next one.”

Larson reads Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25.