THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM by Marie Benedict

Kudos to Marie Benedict for bringing to light the accomplishments of such women as Hedy Lamarr.  Now if only her writing had a little more sparkle.  Anyway, back to Hedy.  With WWII approaching, she marries a powerful Austrian arms dealer in the hope that he can protect her and her Jewish parents from the purge that is coming.  Inevitably, her husband joins forces with Hitler and Mussolini, and Hedy escapes to California to resume her acting career.  Guilt continues to haunt her over the fact that she had access to information about Nazi weaponry that she failed to pass on to the Allies.  To help the war effort, she and George Antheil, a composer, develop a system of torpedo guidance, which they present to the U.S. Navy.  Naturally, the Navy refuses to believe that their system has merit, supposedly because Hedy and George lack credibility as scientists.  In addition to the lackluster writing style of this novel, another shortcoming for me was the abrupt ending to the book.  Most of all, though, I felt that the author took a major shortcut in not giving the reader a little more information as to how Hedy and George became well-versed in wireless technology.  They patented their idea, which was inspired by player piano ribbons, but did they get all of their education from books?  One of the Navy’s initial objections was that their invention was too heavy.  Hedy claims in the novel, however, that their system would fit inside a watch.  Wow, I know nothing about this type of technology, but the transistor radios of the 1960s—two decades later—were a lot bigger than a watch.