The Technologists
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
A city held to ransom. A brave few determined to fight. A race against time.
Spring 1868, and the population of Boston is being terrorised by a series of mysterious attacks: first a magnetic storm causes ships in the harbour to collide in flames, then in another bizarre catastrophe every piece of glass in the financial district spontaneously melts - clocks, windows, eyeglasses. The city's fate relies on four young students: Civil War veteran Marcus Mansfield, brash Bob Richards, meticulous Edwin Hoyt and the eccentric but brilliant Ellen Swallow. Together, they are The Technologists. In a climate of rising hysteria, these four courageous individuals must unite against the forces of darkness to uncover the mastermind before he can stage his greatest outrage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1868 Boston, the latest historical fiction from Pearl (The Dante Club) finds protagonist Marcus Mansfield on the cusp of graduation from the newly formed Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studies intently, spies on the Catholic girls' school, and fights Harvard's unfriendly rowing team. Life at the school is upended after a strange set of calamities takes place. In foggy Boston Harbor, ships collide, and all the glass in the city's central commercial district suddenly liquefies, maiming and killing Bostonians. The police are at a loss, not sure if these are crimes at all. Harvard's best and mostly incompetent minds are enlisted to solve the crime, leaving Mansfield and his friends no option but to form a secret club and solve the mystery themselves. In order to do so, they must contend with a scarred man, Harvard's satanic Medical Faculty (Med Fac) club, and antiscience trade unionists. Lighter than his previous novels, Pearl again blends detective fiction with historical characters (such as pioneering feminist and MIT-trained scientist Ellen Swallow), and his cast reads like a who's who of 19th-century Boston. The novel is lighter than some of Pearl's previous work, but still great fun to read.
