WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
It is the spring of 1945, and in a dusty, remote community, the world´s most brilliant minds have come together in secret. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer ´s "enchanted campus" of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man in search of a killer. Michael Connolly has been sent to the middle of nowhere to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project. But amid the glimmering cocktail parties and the staggering genius, Connolly will find more than he bargained for. Sleeping in a dead man´s bed and making love to another man´s wife, Connolly has entered the moral no-man´s-land of Los Alamos. For in this place of brilliance and discovery, hope and horror, Connolly is plunged into a shadowy war with a killer--as the world is about to be changed forever.