Degrees of Affection

After listening to Larson's Devil in the White City (and rereading it in fits and starts in book form), I put all of his audiobooks on my list. As much as I'm enjoying access to notes with the books, I find I enjoy the text read more than reading it myself.

Another aspect of Larson's work I love is how he weaves two disparate histories together till you reach the moment their paths cross. Here the stories were quite separate: Marconi's creation of wireless telegraphy and connecting ships with shore and each other and Doctor Crippen's grisly and sensational murder.

I'd never learned much beyond the basic textbook knowledge about Marconi and I found I surprisingly enjoyed even the most technical info given. While he must have been a very difficult man to know, he saw the world could be a very different place and helped bring that about. I'm apparently too much an academic though, as pure trial and error strikes me as so inefficient.

Crippen's story was ultimately heartbreaking. You couldn't help but feel for this man but it in no way excuses what he (almost certainly) did. The fact that there's still doubt, which given what the police had to work with and forensic ability at the time is understandable, was not really gone into in the book but was info LL found when trying to figure out who this man I kept mentioning. Knowing his history, every segment of the story was another step to a deadly finale to me. Though Larson didn't mask it either.

The narrator, Bob Balaban, was easy to listen to and an hour or more could go by without my notice. I think I ended up liking him better then Scott Brick, who narrated The Devil in the White City.

Other than my poor planning on hitting the grisly murder scene just as I was fixing dinner - highly discourage this - and noting that those elements might be hard for some people to listen to/read, I would recommend this Lawson book. In some ways I think I enjoyed it more than/was more interested in than his last book I read.