Ordinary Thunderstorms-William Boyd

Ordinary Thunderstorms
William Boyd
Harper, Jan 26 2010, $26.99
ISBN: 9780061876745

Climatologist Adam Kindred and immunologist Dr. Philip Wang met by chance at an Italian restaurant near Royal Hospital not far from where the Thames flows through Chelsea as each dined alone on tables next to each other. The former is in London trying to obtain a research fellowship position at Imperial College while the later works in Oxford at a pharmaceutical firm as a sort of allergist. Wang departs while mumbling something about a good feeling but leaves behind a file with his papers.

Adam picks up the documents so he can return them to Dr. Wang. However at the immunologist’s flat, he finds Wang’s dead body. Not sure what to do as someone is after him besides the cops who have evidence of his visit to the dead man’s apartment, Adam flees for his life. Meanwhile, Wang's boss at Calenture-Deutz, Ingrym Fryzer, realizes someone at the firm wants him out and Wang’s data on an anti-allergy drug that the scientist was working on is missing as the board refuses to wait any longer to market the drug to get the profits though the late researcher was not finished testing it. Fryzer, his shadowy adversary and his paid assassin, and the cops seek a thirty-one years old climatologist who vanished somewhere in Chelsea.

This is an exciting fast-paced thriller in which a young man seeking a job becomes the focus of corporate killers, an ethical CEO, and the Metropolitan Police. The two subplots converge though a series of coincidences starting with the restaurant encounter, but fans of action-packed conspiratorial tales of the avarice affluent vs. a lone reluctant everyman will enjoy Ordinary Thunderstorms turning into a torrent for Adam.

Harriet Klausner