Fall of Man in Wilmslow

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.

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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.)