Many a good man has been destroyed by the stroke of a moment. William Boyd is resuming this experience in a thrilling piece of criminal action, surrounded by economic and political motives.

Adam Kindred, born and grown up in England, well educated and in the first years of his professional development living in the USA, comes back to London for an interview to get a job as a climatologist. By random he meets another scientist in an Italian restaurant who looses some important papers there. Kindred brings them to his apartment and witnesses the last breath taking moments of this scientist, who has been stabbed. Unfortunately Kindred follows the last advice of the scientist and removes the knife of his body, so that he will be suspected of murder.

Kindred goes incognito and with him his old identity is fading out. He lives under a bridge in Chelsea, gets acquainted with the social fringe of society and is taking his meals in a welfare service of a church. Meanwhile an English plant of drug industry which was testing a new product with children to fight asthma comes into the spotlight because it faked scientific reports about the effects of the product and denies the sudden death of about 14 children who took part of the programme. We learn that the murdered scientist would have been an obstacle launching the market.

An ex soldiers of the special service is hunting Kindred by his own methods, trying to kill him before he can publish the documents he possesses from the scientist. For Kindred it is a race with the devil which he will, on the long run win.

Boyds Ordinary Thunderstorms is a well webbed plot about some clichés of economic criminality. The metaphoric title, referring to the professional field of the protagonist, seems to be the real gain of the story. Existentially we all should be aware that we can be driven into a miserable fate just by one stroke, not caused by our own intention.

The text is designed by a narrative force, not too strong, but strong enough to fire your own curiosity. On the other hand there is a more contemplative dimension to think about the incalculability of our own biography. Who starts reading will not stop before the end.