Fall of Man in Wilmslow
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3.8 • 13 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
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 paranoid, febrile atmosphere of the Cold War, loose cannons cannot be tolerated. As his innocent curiosity fast takes him far out of his depth, Corell realises he has much to learn about the dangers of forbidden knowledge.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Swedish novelist David Lagercrantz—coauthor of the autobiography I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic—is set to become a global superstar with the release of the fourth book in Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Fall of Man in Wilmslow makes it easy to see why Lagercrantz was selected to continue Lisbeth Salander’s unsettling story. Based on the real-life demise of Alan Turing, this transfixing mystery sizzles with psychological complexity and dark suspense. As world-weary detective Leonard Corell investigates Turing’s death, he unearths dangerous truths about the mathematician’s personal life and involvement in postwar politics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
