Thin Man

About the Book

The Secret Failure of America's First Atomic Bomb.

'Thin Man' is the story of Jennifer Jemison, a quiet researcher for a major New York newspaper, who finds a photo of her grandfather--Captain Brian Jemison, USAAF, missing in Germany during the last days of World War II--in documents from the Soviet archives. She sets out to find out what happened to him and accidentally discovers that the first atomic bomb was dropped not on Hiroshima, but Berlin! It is the first of several astounding secrets she uncovers. Along the way, Jen develops confidence in herself as she evades a secret agent and reaches her twin goals of finding her grandfather to ease her dying mother's pain and of becoming an investigative reporter for the paper.

Based upon Winston Churchill’s statement that the Soviet Union was “an enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by a mystery” and the ages-old Russian belief that the best way to keep a secret is to bury it within layers of lesser secrets, this novel progresses concurrently along three plot lines. In the outermost, encompassing plot, Jen tells a contentious Congressional Committee of her search and what she found in her effort to clear her grandfather of treason. Within this, the second plot is the search as seen through her eyes, beginning with the photo of her grandfather, as it happened. The third, and innermost, plot is her grandfather's story, beginning with the bomb drop over Berlin on April 11, 1945, the day before President Roosevelt dies.

Like William Parsons of the Enola Gay, Brian Jemison is the weapons officer who arms the first crude atomic bomb, 'Thin Man', before it's dropped on Berlin. But the bomb fails to explode, and he parachutes out to disable it before the Nazis capture it. Moments later, his plane is destroyed. Jemison and the bomb are captured, and a cunning SS Colonel tries to force him to fix the ultimate superweapon as the Soviet army closes in for the last battle. The attempt fails. The Soviets capture Jemison and take him to Siberia where he is persuaded, through an elaborate hoax, to help fix the bomb. It is why Stalin wasn't surprised when Truman told him about the atom bomb in Potsdam: he already had one... ours.

In captivity, Jemison is not told the war is over or that Roosevelt is dead. By the time he learns the truth, it is too late: 'Thin Man' has been repaired. The Soviets detonate it in 1949, scaring the US into a nuclear arms race. Still captive, Brian embarks on a maskirovka, a masquerade, of his own: he passes Soviet nuclear secrets to the US until he is killed in the radioactive disaster at Kyshtym, near Chelyabinsk, in 1958.    

To learn this, Jen begins her search for him in the New York Public Library and, later, at the National Archives. Her queries alert an NSA agent, who's ordered to find out why she's so interested in certain altered records of the Manhattan Project. Jen accidentally bumps into him late one night as she's leaving the Archives.

 Finding nothing about her grandfather in the US, Jen goes to Moscow against her boss' wishes and sees the agent again during a layover in Berlin. Now worried, Jen hastily leaves for Russia. The flight almost crashes. In Moscow she meets Yuri, a Russian newspaper assistant, and together they discover the truth about Jen's grandfather and 'Thin Man' from unaltered documents in the old Soviet archives.

But again Jen sees the special agent--who's now convinced she's a Cuban agent--and she flees with Yuri, who becomes her lover. Their escape takes them on the Trans-Siberian railroad to the old nuclear facility at Kyshtym where, as Jen discovers her grandfather's diary, they are captured by die-hard communists bent on destroying Russia’s fledgling democracy. Jen and Yuri accidentally overpower their captors, only to have their escape foiled by the special agent. Imprisoned together, she learns who he is and why he's been following he

About the Author

Dan Donalson, fortysomething, lives in League City, Texas with his wife and two teenaged children. He spends his work day as a Consulting Systems Analyst, persuading recalcitrant computers to talk to each other. He is contemplating a Doctorate in History but cannot begin until he finishes paying for his children’s’ college education, anticipated to be early second quarter, 2037. In the meantime, he reads any history book he can lay his hands on, including his son’s History textbook. Checking for accuracy, he claims. Dan was a beekeeper, but had to give up that sweet hobby when, under his expert care, the bees in his back yard enthusiastically grew to twenty-five hives... that, and the only time he had left to "work" them was between one and two in the morning. ...and honeybees get positively upset when awakened at that hour, whereas the computer he writes on doesn't mind at all.