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.

Praise for Los Alamos

"A magnificent work of fiction . . . a love story inside a murder mystery inside perhaps the most significant story of the twentieth century: the making of the atomic bomb."--The Boston Globe

"Compelling . . . [Joseph Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical drama of excitement and high moral seriousness." --The New York Times

"Thrilling . . . Kanon writes with the sure hand of a veteran and does a marvelous job."--The Washington Post Book World