Fall of Man in Wilmslow
A powerful tale of honour, prejudice and the twentieth century’s most maltreated hero, by the acclaimed author of THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB.
June 8, 1954. Alan Turing, the visionary mathematician, is found dead at his home in sleepy Wilmslow, dispatched by a poisoned apple.
Taking the case, Detective Constable Leonard Corell quickly learns Turing is a convicted homosexual. Confident it’s a suicide, he is nonetheless confounded by official secrecy over Turing’s war record. What is more, Turing’s sexuality appears to be causing alarm among the intelligence services – could he have been blackmailed by Soviet spies?
Stumbling across evidence of Turing’s genius, and sensing an escape from a narrow life, Corell soon becomes captivated by Turing’s brilliant and revolutionary work, and begins to dig deeper. But in the febrile atmosphere of the Cold War, loose cannons cannot be tolerated. As his innocent curiosity takes him far out of his depth, Corell realises he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge.
June 8, 1954. Alan Turing, the visionary mathematician, is found dead at his home in sleepy Wilmslow, dispatched by a poisoned apple.
Taking the case, Detective Constable Leonard Corell quickly learns Turing is a convicted homosexual. Confident it’s a suicide, he is nonetheless confounded by official secrecy over Turing’s war record. What is more, Turing’s sexuality appears to be causing alarm among the intelligence services – could he have been blackmailed by Soviet spies?
Stumbling across evidence of Turing’s genius, and sensing an escape from a narrow life, Corell soon becomes captivated by Turing’s brilliant and revolutionary work, and begins to dig deeper. But in the febrile atmosphere of the Cold War, loose cannons cannot be tolerated. As his innocent curiosity takes him far out of his depth, Corell realises he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge.
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Reviews
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
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
Absorbing . . . Gets the synapses sparking . . . Lagercrantz is at home with a damaged hero who has more of an affinity with computers than humans
A persuasive evocation of Turing's genius and of a Britain still suffering under rationing and repression
Perhaps the most signal achievement here is the clever melding of two narrative forms: a sympathetic biography of a real historical figure treated appallingly by the establishment, and a police procedural in which a dogged copper tries to crack a mystery in the teeth of bloody-minded intransigence
Swedish crime fiction moves into Britain's heartland in this superbly written espionage and murder novel . . . Lagercrantz has the lingo, the mood and the place down pat.