Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Erik Larson knows how to dig up great stories -- ones that grabbed headlines a century ago -- and return them to the limelight.
His 2003 best seller The Devil in the White City blended the tale of the respected architect behind the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a doctor/serial killer then on the loose.
After Devil, Larson swore he would never again do "a dual narrative. It is like writing two stories at once."
Then he came across a fascinating story set during the late Victorian, Edwardian era (late 1800s, early 1900s), mainly in England, that combines two tales of science and mayhem.
His new non-fiction book, Thunderstruck (Crown, $25.95), tells the twin stories. The good guy is Guglielmo Marconi, the young inventor of the wireless, which made instant communication around the world possible and helped lead to the invention of the radio. The bad guy is meek-looking Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American doctor living in England who murdered his wife.
The tales mesh when wireless is used to capture Crippen and his lover, Ethel Le Neve (dressed as a boy), who are trying to escape aboard a trans-Atlantic ship. The ship's captain sent messages to Scotland Yard about the fugitives.
The London Times called it the North London Cellar Murder (which gives a clue to where Mrs. Crippen landed). The story captured the public's imagination when Chief Inspector Walter Dew set off in a ship to arrest Crippen -- something reporters raced to cover.
Thunderstruck has a rich cast of supporting characters, such as Oliver Lodge, a competitor of Marconi's who believed in seances as much as science.
And there is an abundance of side stories -- Marconi's love life, the first staging of Peter Pan in 1904, early science experiments, the fascination with the spirit world, the parade of jewels, furs and dresses.
Above all, there was a passion for inventions and the notion that "anything could be done if you put your mind to it," says Larson.
He came across the story for Thunderstruck in an accidental way. The word wireless "just popped into my head.''
"One thing led to another. I was on the website www.marconicalling.com and I saw a reference to Crippen. My mind lit up. I thought, what the hell did Crippen have to do with the wireless?" says Larson.
"It goes back to when I was a kid. My mother was a big mystery junkie. I remember her telling me about the Crippen story."
Larson, a former journalist who worked at The Wall Street Journal and Time, says everything came together because of ample documentation -- photos, letters, scientific reports, a transcript of the Crippen trial. And he was delighted to find memoirs from just about everyone -- for starters, Degna Marconi's My Father, Marconi and Crippen's lover's Ethel Le Neve.
Larson, 52, lives in Seattle with his wife, three daughters and a golden retriever named Molly. He's not sure why the 1900s are such a magnet for him, although he does try to find "those things that were once big deals, really compelling."
As for why these stories fade away: "Your guess," he says, "is as good as mine."
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
