PanLos Angeles Review of Books\"Markel’s argument fails for a peculiar reason: not because he misstates Franklin’s treatment (although at times he does), but because for all his gallantry, Franklin remains overshadowed. The world he creates on the page is just as simplistic and male-dominated as the one he seeks to replace ... all the apparatus of a scholarly history: context-setting introductory chapters, footnotes, index ... verbose, earnest, humorless ... He seems as obsessed with Watson as Watson was with DNA: Watson’s name occurs as often as Franklin’s and Crick’s combined. So although Markel gives us the most critical reading yet of Watson’s role in the double helix discovery, no other account hews so closely to Watson’s narrative or gives him such an outsize role in the discovery. Markel’s characters are as two-dimensional as Watson’s ... Franklin can be read accurately as a tragic heroic figure who has received full recognition only posthumously. Markel makes her pitiful, a passive victim. The heart of Markel’s book, the conspiracy theory, is built on sand. Much of his case is made by speculation, insinuation, and innuendo, which is often larded with trivial detail ... The book would be a more convincing defense of Franklin if Markel weren’t constantly stealing the spotlight.\
