Interweaving fact and fiction, Los Alamos gives the background of the 1945 Manhattan Project to make an atomic bomb, while at the same time building a nicely constructed tale of murder and passion. A security man is done to death, the wife of one of the scientists begins an affair with the former journalist sent to pry into the crime, and real-life figures such as Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the project, and General Groves, the army commander, flit in and out of the story. Nothing terribly original about Mr Kanon's prose, but the mise en scene makes up for a sometimes plodding narrative.
By Vincent Banville
