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Fall of Man in Wilmslow: A Novel of Alan Turing
Current price:
$16.00
Publication Date: April 4th, 2017
Publisher:
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN:
9781101970416
Pages:
416
Description
From the author of the #1 bestseller The Girl in the Spider’s Web—an electrifying thriller that begins with Alan Turing’s suicide and plunges into a post-war Britain of immeasurable repression, conformity and fear
On June 8, 1954, Alan Turing is found dead in his home in the sleepy suburb of Wilmslow—an apparent suicide. Investigators assumed he purposely ate a cyanide-laced apple because he was unable to cope with the humiliation of his criminal conviction for gross indecency.
But Leonard Corell, a young detective constable who once dreamed of a career in higher mathematics, suspects greater forces are involved. In the face of opposition from his superiors and in the paranoid atmosphere of the Cold War, he inches closer to the truth and to one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Second World War—what was going on at Bletchley Park. With state secrets swirling in his mind and a growing fear that he is under surveillance, Corell realizes that he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge.
Praise for Fall of Man in Wilmslow: A Novel of Alan Turing
“Absorbing. . . . Gets the synapses sparking.” —The Sunday Telegraph (London)
“Illuminating . . . a rewarding book to read.” —The Washington Times
“Lagercrantz has the lingo, the mood and the place down pat.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“Winning. . . . A police procedural in which a dogged copper tries to crack a mystery in the teeth of bloody-minded intransigence.” —The Independent (London)
“Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web) proves that he can succeed with wholly original work in this multifaceted look at the death of British mathematician Alan Turing in 1954. . . . Memorable prose . . . enhances the complex plot.” —Publishers Weekly
“Turing's life and death have become popular subjects, but this novel by a well-known Swedish writer offers an interesting and fresh angle. . . . A persuasive evocation of Turing's genius and of a Britain still suffering under rationing and repression.” —The Daily Mail (London)
“Lagercrantz neatly intertwines the facts of Turing's life with the fiction of Corell's quest for knowledge to create an unsettling story of state secrets and sexual hypocrisy.” —The Sunday Times (London)
“[A] pensive meditation on the life and death of the mathematician Alan Turing . . . [and a] quietly suggestive depiction of how the investigation affects the investigator. . . . Full of psychological insight.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[Lagercrantz] has the faintest whiff of W.G. Sebald; haunted characters determined to pull others down into turbid, oppressive currents of memory and ideas. You are willingly drawn down with them.” —The Spectator (London)
“Lagercrantz’s fictional variations on this true story make it seem fresh and even more appalling.” —The Star (Toronto)
