Review- Fritz Theden

Book review

Ordinary thunder storms

by William Boyd

'Ordanary thunder storms' is an adventure into the non touristic parts of London. William Boyd`s thriller deals with social and ethnical diversity in a metropolis in the 21. century. One's identity is the major theme Boyd is dealing with in his novel. Living in a metropolis, under millions of citizens, in a place of anonymity, one can loose his own identity and either take someone elses, or create someone new. This is exactly what happens in Boyd's thriller with his main character Adam Kindred.

Kindred is a climatologist from Amerika,who is in London for a job interview, after his wife has left him, due to cheating.  Dining alone, he gets into a conversation with Philipp Wang, an immunologist at the pharmaceuticall company Calenture- Deutz, who leaves his files in the restaurant. After Adam has gotten out of the restaurant he goes to Wangs hotel room to return the files. Kindred discovers Wang lying on the bed in a pool of blood  with a bread knife in his side. Kindred, being generally a smart man, does one really stupid thing here: he removes the bread knife out of Wang's  body causing his death and leaving fingerprints on the murder wapon. Hearing a noise and suddenly thinking about the killer, which could still be in the hotel room, Kindred flees the scene of the crime. While he is walking through the streets of London and thinking about what to do next and what to tell the police about the murder scene of Philip Wang, Jonjo Case, the actuall murderer of Wang appears and Kindred strikes him down with the briefcase he still has from Wang. Panicking, Kindred can't find any better solution than settling down for one night, going underground. 

I personally could not understand why Adam Kindred would do so in this part of the book. This scene, which is only within the first chapter, is the starting point of Kindred's whole story line and has much importance for the rest of the book. At some points I could not understand Kindred's thoughts and actions. I think that in real life barely anybody not to say nobody would have reacted in that way. To hide from the police makes you look a lot more suspicious than trying to convince them of your innocence. 

However, Adam Kindred, now having a murderer, and some chapters later, also the police on his trail, creates a hiding-place of waste ground near Chelsea Bridge. All of the sudden Kindred is nothing. He has come to the very bottom of social life. In the furtcher ongoing of the book Boyd lets his main character go through various social classes. Adam beginns to begg a little amount of money, lives with a prostitute called 'Mhouse' and her son for a while and later changes his whole identity. The tragic death of his friend Vladimir, gives Kindred the opportunity to take over his identity. Boyd lets his characters encouter with different social classes, espacially Adam, who lives in the Shaftesbury Estate for some time, one of the major problem areas in London. All these different characters in the novel combined with many sub-plots are all very interesting yet a bit underdeveloped.

However, Boyd does not only describe the low-budget setting in London. Ingram Fryzer, the chief officer of Calenture- Deutz, a multibillionaire, is the boss of Philip Wang. He is developing in the opposite direction than Adam. While Adam is climbing up the social classes, Ingram looses his power in his company. At the time Adam has his new identity, has his own flat, a job, a girlfriend, Ingram's company Calenture-Deutz is going bankrupt and his ongoing headaches are diagnosed as a tumor. 

In my opinion William Boyd has succeeded in writing a readable, multi-stranded thriller dealing with an interesting, and modern question: Can you simply change your identity  without anybody noticing it? And also: What is our identity? What makes you another person?

I have enjoyed reading about these interesting questions. The whole plot ,including all of the many characters and their interactions, is quite complex, but Boyd has made those characters individual, interesting and developing and so made a good piece of art. Even though I could not understand, why Kindred made this important decision of going underground, I would highly recommend this book to everyone else out there. 

Fritz Theden