Having been a fan of Erik Larson‘s writing, I had to pick up Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. Some of the books I have read by Larson include:
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
- Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
- Thunderstruck
Devil was the much better of the three and I hoped that Dead Wake would be in that vein. It was. While not as intriguing as Devil, it still kept me interested throughout. Sure, I already knew what was going to happen but Larson did a masterful job of building the suspense using his slow-boil technique of humanizing the doomed passengers. It is his style of writing non-fiction more like a novel that keeps his books interesting.
A lot of people complain about the minutia – the sheer volume of detail that Larson includes in his books. I however, an amazed at the amount of research he puts into subjects that usually only warrant a single sentence or paragraph in history books. Mr. Larson has done it again. This is a great read.
by Chris Doelle
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