OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
From the author of the #1 best seller 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 June 8, 1954. Several English nationals have defected to the USSR, while a witch hunt for homosexuals rages across Britain. In these circumstances, no one is surprised when a mathematician by the name of Alan Turing is found dead in his home in the sleepy suburb of Wilmslow. It is widely assumed that he has committed suicide, unable to cope with the humiliation of a criminal conviction for gross indecency. But a young detective constable, Leonard Corell, who once dreamed of a career in higher mathematics, suspects greater forces are involved. In the face of opposition from his superiors, he begins to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that lead him to one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war: the Bletchley Park operation to crack the Nazis’ Enigma encryption code. Stumbling across evidence of Turing’s genius, and sensing an escape from a narrow life, Corell begins to dig deeper. But in the paranoid, febrile atmosphere of the Cold War, loose cannons cannot be tolerated and Corell soon realizes he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge. He is also about to be rocked by two startling developments in his own life, one of which will find him targeted as a threat to national security.
From the author of the #1 best seller 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 June 8, 1954. Several English nationals have defected to the USSR, while a witch hunt for homosexuals rages across Britain. In these circumstances, no one is surprised when a mathematician by the name of Alan Turing is found dead in his home in the sleepy suburb of Wilmslow. It is widely assumed that he has committed suicide, unable to cope with the humiliation of a criminal conviction for gross indecency. But a young detective constable, Leonard Corell, who once dreamed of a career in higher mathematics, suspects greater forces are involved. In the face of opposition from his superiors, he begins to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that lead him to one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war: the Bletchley Park operation to crack the Nazis’ Enigma encryption code. Stumbling across evidence of Turing’s genius, and sensing an escape from a narrow life, Corell begins to dig deeper. But in the paranoid, febrile atmosphere of the Cold War, loose cannons cannot be tolerated and Corell soon realizes he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge. He is also about to be rocked by two startling developments in his own life, one of which will find him targeted as a threat to national security.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book
2
It rained the next day as well and young Detective Constable Leonard Corell came walking along Adlington Road. When he drew level with Brown’s Lane, he took off his trilby because he felt warm despite the rain, and he thought of his bed, not the miserable bed in his flat but the one waiting at his aunt’s in Knutsford, and as he did so his head sank down to his shoulder, as if he were about to fall asleep.
He did not like his job. He did not like the salary, the walking, the paperwork, or godforsaken Wilmslow where nothing ever happened. It had got to the point where even now he felt nothing but emptiness. And yet the housekeeper who called had mentioned a white froth around the dead man’s mouth and a smell of poison in the house, and in the past a report like this would definitely have sparked some life in Corell. Now he just plodded along the puddles of water and the garden hedges. Behind lay the field and the railway. It was Tuesday, June 8, 1954, and he glanced down, looking for the signs with the house names on them.
When he found the address “Hollymeade,” he turned in to the left and was met by a large willow which looked like a big old broom, and without needing to he stopped and retied his shoelaces. A brick pathway stretched halfway across the yard and then came to an abrupt stop, and he wondered to himself what had happened here, although obviously he realised that, whatever it was, it had nothing to do with the brick footpath. Over by the left-hand entrance stood an elderly woman.
“Are you the housekeeper?” he said, and she nodded. She was a colourless little old lady with sad eyes, and when he was younger Corell would probably have given her a warm gentle smile and put a hand on her shoulder. Now he just looked down grimly and followed her in, up a steep staircase, and there was nothing pleasant about the walk, no excitement, no policeman’s curiosity, hardly even a feeling of unease, only a “Why do I have to keep on with this?”
Already in the hallway he sensed a presence, a closeness in the air, and as he went into the room he closed his eyes and, to be honest, perhaps strange given the circumstances, one or two inappropriate thoughts of a sexual nature went through his mind which there’s no need to elaborate on now, other than to say that they seemed absurd even to him. When he opened his eyes, the associations lingered over the room like a surreal membrane, but they dissolved into something else when he discovered the bed, the narrow bed, and on top of it a man, dead, lying on his back.
The man was dark-haired and perhaps a little over thirty. From the corner of his mouth, white froth had run down his cheek and dried into a white powder. The eyes were half open and were set deep down under a protruding, domed forehead. Although the face did not exactly radiate tranquillity, one could sense a certain resignation in the features, and Corell should have reacted with composure. He was no stranger to death and this was no gruesome end, but he felt sick and had still not realised that it was the smell, the stench of bitter almonds hovering over the room, and he looked out through the window towards the garden and tried to return to the inappropriate thoughts, but was not successful and instead noticed half an apple on the bedside table. Corell thought, which surprised him, that he hated fruit.
He had never had anything against apples. Who does not like apples? From his breast pocket, he took out his notebook.
The man is lying in a nearly normal position, he wrote, and wondered if that formulation was good, it probably wasn’t...
About the Author-
DAVID LAGERCRANTZ is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and author. He has worked as a crime reporter for Expressen and has written several novels, including the #1 best-selling The Girl in the Spider’s Web. He worked with international soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimović on his memoir I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović, which was short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and nominated for the August Prize in Sweden.
www.davidlagercrantz.se
Reviews-
March 28, 2016 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. Det. Constable Leonard Corell welcomes the assignment of looking into Turing’s apparent suicide as a break from the boredom of working in the quiet backwater of Wilmslow. Corell, who as a boy had a head for numbers, feels a connection with the dead man, a sentiment that deepens when the policeman learns that Turing was arrested for indecency and subject to some horrific treatments intended to “cure” him of his homosexuality. Turing’s experience revives painful memories of Corell’s own boarding school days, even as his investigation attracts the attention of higher-ups who want things handled discreetly. Corell’s identification with Turing threatens his own professional standing when he bridles at speculation at the inquest as to Turing’s motives for committing suicide. Some memorable prose (Corell recalls a question from his father as reaching “out to him like two open arms”) enhances the complex plot. Agent: Magdalena Hedlund, Hedlund Agency (Sweden).
March 15, 2016 Lagercrantz, heir to Stieg Larsson and author of the latest Lisbeth Sander installment, The Girl in the Spider's Web (2015), turns to a mystery of another sort. Wilmslow, near Manchester, is a gloomy sort of northern place, about right for a suicide. (Just ask Ian Curtis.) That's the opening gambit of Lagercrantz's long, pensive meditation on the life and death of the mathematician Alan Turing, who famously did himself in with a cyanide-laced apple. Apple in the garden, Fall of Man: the obvious allusion would have worked better, perhaps, if Turing himself had seen any particularly grand lesson in death other than escape from some particularly ill treatment, for he was chemically castrated as punishment for being homosexual in a Britain that would later repent that terrible injustice to a man who, after all, had helped bring down Nazi Germany. Lagercrantz adds further psychological dimension to the story by introducing DC Leonard Corell, a dour sort who becomes gloomier on contemplating the corpse. As he questions why Turing should have killed himself, he implicates an unhappy family life, disbelieving parents, sniffy associates ("Alan found it hard to blend in. He couldn't play along, to be blunt"), and intelligence operatives who, now that the enemy has shifted from Germany to Russia, still have a stake in keeping Turing's secrets secret. The story and its possibilities (was Turing murdered? were his assignations with Soviet spies?) beg for the taut handling of a John le Carre, Alan Furst, or Graham Greene, but Lagercrantz lets things drift on a bit too long and a bit too talkily to keep the necessary tension. Better, though, is his quietly suggestive depiction of how the investigation affects the investigator; says one colleague to Corell, "This whole Alan Turing business seems to have become something very personal for you," to which the reader will sagely nod, ah, if you only knew.... A bookend of sorts to Bruce Duffy's fine novel The World as I Found It (1987); full of psychological insight though not much action.
COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
May 1, 2016
In 1954, DC Leonard Corell finds the body of Dr. Alan Turing in his bed, apparently a suicide. Turing, the British mathematical genius who played a major role in cracking the Nazi Enigma code machine during World War II, had recently been convicted of homosexual acts and removed from government service. Corell's math background helps him investigate whether any state secrets had been compromised. It's the era of the Cambridge Five spies in England and the McCarthy hearings in the United States, and Turing's role in both countries is under close scrutiny. Lagercrantz interweaves the historical events of Turing's life with the fictional Corell's investigation, shifting point of view among various figures. While Lagercrantz's premise is intriguing, Corell is full of insecurity and self-pity and dwells on it far too much. In fact, he doesn't really investigate much nor act decisively. The depiction of Turing is done well, but there is little mystery present, and the writing resembles a 19th-century character study. VERDICT Readers who relished the Swedish author's acclaimed sequel (The Girl in the Spider Web) to Stieg Larsson's trilogy and its vividly drawn protagonists will be disappointed in his passive treatment of his characters here.--Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 15, 2016 After many years of protection under the Official Secrets Act, Bletchley Park and Alan Turing now have no secrets. They have all been revealed on paper and in film, with varying success. Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web, 2015) takes his turn in this complex novel. Turing has been found dead. Leonard Correll, a young and mathematically gifted detective sergeant, suspects that it's part of a conspiracy, not a suicide. Correll's keen mind figures out that Turing did something involving cryptology in the war, information still ultrasecret and dangerous to know in 1954 England. It is an England of paranoid Cold War homophobia. Turing has always been on the intelligence services' watch list. This is an interesting take on the story, but it is actually more about Correll's voyage of self-discovery than Turing. The extensive and highly technical passages become tedious. There is more innuendo and internalization than there is suspense. This one is strictly for insatiable Turing fans and for readers who relish in-depth psychological fiction rather than the white-knuckle experience Lagercrantz managed in Spider's Web.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
The Sunday Telegraph (London)
"Absorbing. . . . Gets the synapses sparking."
Title Information+
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
OverDrive Read
Release date:
EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
