She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. Still, readers who care more about atmosphere than accuracy will enjoy this breezy melodrama. The real-life events of the War of the Currents are exciting enough without embroidery. Perhaps you have been noticing.” Eventually, inspired by the innovative business practices of Westinghouse and Edison, Cravath invents the 20th-century law firm and wins the hand of the lady. 'You’re a co-conspirator in this villainy?' ' Tesla, a Serbian, talks funny: “My accent is wide. A devastating lab fire! An inexplicable disappearance! A beautiful diva with a mysterious past! An attempted murder! An electrocuted dog! The characters mug and posture like actors in a silent film with dramatic captions: “She turned her glare to Westinghouse. The key to winning, Cravath decides, is to get Nikola Tesla-the mad scientist to end all mad scientists-to invent a better lightbulb.

He tells the story from the point of view of Paul Cravath, the young attorney charged with defending Westinghouse against a potentially devastating patent suit brought by Edison. In the late 19th century, as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse began wiring America for electricity, the titans locked horns over which electrical standard would prevail-AC or DC-in a struggle that came to be known as the “War of the Currents.” Novelist ( The Sherlockian, 2010) and screenwriter ( The Imitation Game, 2014) Moore chops up and rearranges a decade’s worth of events, squeezes them into two years, adds a few crimes, and serves the result up in a lively if unsurprising legal thriller.

The great tech innovators of the '90s-that’s the 1890s-posture, plot, and even plan murder in this business book–turned–costume drama.

The last days of night a novel