Doubleday
July
23, 2019
978-0385543408
Thriller,
Suspense
Hardback
Obtained
by Publisher
3
Hearts
The
year is 1961 and it is the height of the cold war. The USSR and United States are vying for supremacy
and building bigger and better bombs is a popular mode of achieving that
goal. America had “Little Boy” and the
USSR is in the midst of building RDS-220 – an even bigger nuclear bomb in a
secret city, Arzamas-16. When one of the
scientists building the bomb dies, State investigator Major Alexander Vasin, is
sent to investigate. When he arrives it
seems the death is not, as the initial report claims, a suicide. Is it an accident? Or is it murder? The deeper Vasin digs into the mysterious
death, the more questions he has. And this
is communist Russia where spies spy on each other. Where the state controls every aspect of life…and
death. And what of RDS-220? Will it create devastation or prevent further
war?
I was
definitely enticed by the blurb I read for Owen Matthews’ Black Sun. It sounded like it was going to be a white
knuckle page turner of a thriller. While
there were some intense moment, especially at the end, for the most part the
story rolled along without much drama.
There was a considerable amount of technical information and to Matthews’
credit he had the characters explain a lot of what it meant. I found the information on uranium and its various
make up fascinating. The tone of the
story, Matthews’ story telling voice, lends itself strongly to the overall idea
of what I thought Russia, the USSR, was like growing up—cold, dark, dreary—and that
was the people.
Every
so often there was a bit of humor thrown in – which made the story richer
because you never saw it coming.
I
never warmed up to Vasin I’m not sure if
it was because he was a victim of his circumstances or he just wasn’t a
character I’d ever relate to. Black Sun
is an interesting read, one that I think most male readers would enjoy. The twist at the end was a letdown. Here Vasin has come so far and now this…and
you’ll have to read it to see just what “this” is.
This
is an objective review and not an endorsement
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