The London Times said, “There was something intensely thrilling, almost weird, in the thought of these two passengers traveling across the Atlantic in the belief that their identity and their whereabouts were unknown while both were being flashed with certainty to all quarters of the civilized world.”

There was a time when “Crippen the Poisoner” was as famous as Jack the Ripper, largely because he was the first murderer whose arrest could be followed in “real time” by the public, through wireless telegraph reports. His story, along with the story of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless, entwine to form the narrative of Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck. He performed a similar trick in his fascinating book, The Devil in the White City.

Hawley Harvey Crippen came from a respected Methodist family in Michigan. Though known as “Dr. Crippen,” he was in fact a homeopath. But he was respected by all who knew him – a tiny, balding, pop-eyed, bespectacled man, unfailingly polite and endlessly patient with everyone. Especially with his wife Cora, who was bubbly and social and domineering. She was, in descending stages, an aspiring opera singer, an aspiring Variety performer, and finally a popular hostess with the theatrical set, first in the US, then in London. She was an extravagant shopper and treated her husband as a house servant. Until…

Until he hired young Ethel Le Neve as a typist in his office, and fell in love with her. One day he announced to Cora’s friends that she’d left suddenly for America. And not long after, he told them she had died. This struck them as preposterous – gregarious Cora leaving without saying goodbye? Leaving all her clothes and jewelry behind? (Especially when they spotted Ethel wearing one of her necklaces.)

Some of them called the police, and Inspector Dew (who would become a celebrity because of this case) interviewed Crippen, who seemed plausible. But when a body was found buried in the basement, and Crippen and Ethel vanished, the hunt began.

A hunt that would have been impossible except for a brand-new invention, Wireless telegraphy, a new technology that wasn’t even perfected yet.

The other thread of this book is the story of the inventor of the Wireless, Guglielmo Marconi. Today we’d classify Marconi as someone on the autistic scale – obsessive in his interests, clueless in dealing with people. He wasn’t really a scientist – he was a tinkerer, an experimenter who followed his instincts rather than scientific principles. This annoyed real scientists, and together with his disregard for their feelings, made him a lot of enemies.

It’s an irony of this story that the murderer is nearly the most sympathetic character in it. I’m glad that author Larson chose to tell it in a dispassionate manner – it could have been maudlin.

If you like history and lots of interesting details, Thunderstruck is a fascinating book. I recommend it.

It’s very good news in my world that the Murder Room Series is bringing out John D. MacDonald’s old stand-alone novels, and at a reasonable price. I flee from postmodern literature to these books like a cockroach from a kitchen light.

Area of Suspicion was published in 1954, long before MacDonald’s Travis McGee character was conceived. But it looks as if the setting of the opening must have stuck with him, because it’s right out of that series. Gevan Dean lives the life of a beach bum in Florida, in a community of beach and boat people who make a lifestyle of partying and casual sex. He doesn’t live on a houseboat like McGee, but the ambience is familiar. Gev used to run the family business, a manufacturing company, but he fled after he found his brother Ken in the arms of his fiancée, Niki. He went to Florida to forget. Lately, though, the party life has palled on him, and he’s been pulling back from his neighbors.

Then he gets word that his brother Ken is dead, murdered, apparently by a random robber. By the time he gets the news, it’s too late to attend the funeral. But there is time to attend the meeting of the company’s board, where the next CEO will be chosen. He’s going to go to that.

Back at home, in a fictional city, he is reunited with Niki, who’s as beautiful and seductive as he remembers. She tells him she made a mistake. It’s Gev she loves. All he needs to do is vote his shares for the current CEO, rather than for the old employee his uncle supports, and they can run off together and live happily ever after.

But Gev is suspicious. Something doesn’t smell right. The CEO Niki supports is a little too smooth, a little too ingratiating. And why has he fired all the best men Gev hired back when he was in charge? And was his brother’s murder really just wrong place, wrong time? When he starts asking awkward questions, Gev soon find himself facing physical threats. And a plot that’s deeper and more devious than he could imagine.

John D. MacDonald studied business at Harvard, so he writes about it with understanding and sympathy – something that’s rare in popular literature. He also had, even at this early date, an excellent way with his characters – they’re well-rounded and sympathetic, even the bad ones. Our hero Gev is smart enough to leave town for his own safety when the police suggest he do that(!) And the writing is evocative and spare, all at the same time.

Highly recommended. Cautions for sex scenes, though they’re pretty tame by today’s standards.