Simple thunderstorm

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Simple Thunderstorms (English original title: Ordinary Thunderstorms ) is the German-language edition of the tenth novel by William Boyd , published in 2009 . The German translation by Chris Hirte was also published in 2009.

Simple Thunderstorm is a thriller story of a chase through London . The background is the attempted cover-up of deaths in drug tests.

The novel consists of 60 chapters, the plot period extends over several months.

content

The climatologist Adam Kindred, who has returned to London from America, makes the acquaintance of the chief developer of the pharmaceutical company Calenture-Deutz, Philip Wang. When he tries to bring him his abandoned briefcase, he finds him in his apartment with a knife in his chest. Wang dies in his presence, and all the evidence points to Kindred as his killer. Kindred flees with the portfolio and from then on hides in a bush by the Chelsea Bridge on the Thames bank. The police are looking for him and apparently someone else is after him.

The life of the chairman of the supervisory board and CEO of Calenture-Deutz, Ingram Fryzer, no longer takes the course he wanted, his adult children are moving away from him, his marriage has frozen into routine and at Calenture-Deutz, where you are about to get there, that The cocky American pharmaceutical entrepreneur Alfredo Rilke bought the newly developed, fully effective asthma drug Zembla-4. His troop is concerned about missing files. Fryzer is being cornered more and more, the market launch of Zembla-4 is being pushed by Rilke, decisions are being made over Fryzer's head; after all, he has to realize that he has lost control of many areas. In addition, a physical problem begins to plague him, he has speech interruptions and poor concentration. At the end of the novel, after a threatened publication of the documents about the deaths in the test phase of Zembla-4 finally prevented the drug from being launched on the market and Rilke withdrew from Calenture-Deutz, Fryzer died of a brain tumor.

Former soldier and Iraqi fighter Jonjo Case was tasked with murdering Philip Wang and is now after Kindred and the files. With the doggedness of a mercenary, he never gives up and comes dangerously close to Kindred several times, only chance prevents success. In the end, he is completely surprisingly and disappointingly released from his contract, which does not prevent him from continuing the pursuit.

The policewoman Rita Nashe, who has just been transferred to the water police and lives with her father on the Thames houseboat Bellerophon , will cross Kindred's paths several times, she will unwittingly save his life and later start a passionate affair with him.

As a persecuted person and refugee through London, Adam Kindred goes through several stations and metamorphoses: at first he just hides, then when he runs out of money, he begins - very successfully - to beg, and then he returns to the soup kitchen of the Church of John Christ , a sect around the self-proclaimed Bishop Yemis, is back. This was pointed out to him by the prostitute Mhouse, for whom he developed a certain affection and finally moved in with her and her son Ly-on in a social apartment for a while. When one of the cult supporters dies, Kindred takes on his identity, takes over his job as a nurse and finally begins to uncover the drug scandal - ultimately successfully. And although he even becomes a murderer, he has a happy relationship with Rita in his new identity as Primo Belem.

Themes and motifs

Boyd varied the theme of the chase in Simple Thunderstorms , to which John Buchan in 1915 with The Thirty-Nine Steps and Geoffrey Household in 1939 with Loner, Male provided the two relevant masterpieces. In contrast to these forerunners, however, the hunt here takes place in the big city and takes up the motif of the urban jungle , which has been used since Edgar Allan Poe . What is new here is the avoidance of public transport, telephone and cashless payment transactions, which were previously regarded as advantages of the big city, which has become necessary due to area-wide observation and data storage. The protagonist is forced to resort to premodern methods of transport and communication.

However, as in Boyd's previous books, the core theme of the novel is the question of the identity of modern man in the face of contingency and chance and a society that is increasingly disintegrating into completely different social groups.

expenditure

  • Original English Edition: Ordinary Thunderstorms at Bloomsbury London 2009
  • German-language first edition: Simple thunderstorms , German by Chris Hirte; Berlin: Berlin-Verlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-827-00878-7
  • Paperback: Simple Thunderstorm , same translation; Berlin: Berliner Taschenbuch-Verlag 2010. ISBN 978-3-8333-0701-0

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