Stealing Thunder — Peter Millar

Stealing Thunder presents a thrillingly suspenseful alternative history. Set against the backdrop of the actual events that took place at Los Alamos during the development of the atomic bomb, Stealing Thunder gives voice to real characters such as Robert Oppenheimer, Nils Bohr, and the convicted traitor, Klaus Fuchs. The action moves from 1944 to present day and from the New Mexico desert to Boston, London, Berlin, Moscow and a remote farm in Iceland where horses are dying from a mysterious disease.

Cynical, twice-divorced journalist John Burke is led by a young, attractive German counterpart, Sabine Kotschke, to investigate what could be the big story he has been seeking all his professional life. Amid plot and counterplot, with the White House and the Kremlin hurrying to impede their progress, Burke and Kotschke negotiate a maze of conflicting information and sinister threats that leads back to Los Alamos and the men who made the atom bomb. In a gripping finale, Burke finds himself reassessing those legendary nuclear physicists-which, if any, were really traitors? And the beautiful, self-confident Sabine to whom he has grown so close-is she really just a journalist after a good story, or does she have other intentions?