Drug of Choice (1970) – Micheal Crichton

Micheal Crichton writing as his alter-ego John Lange delivers a fast-paced, odd, and occasionally uneven tale with Drug of Choice. I think the biggest problem with the story is that its too short. A number of the sequences could have been expanded on to unnerve the reader and immerse them into the mystery of what…

The Venom Business (1969) – Michael Crichton

I dove into Michael Crichton’s next book, The Venom Business, as I work through his bibliography. This one took me a while to actually get into. There’s a bit of a convoluted plot for the first half of the book inundated with the parties and happenings of a swinging London where everyone, apparently, is over-sexed,…

Zero Cool (1969) – Micheal Crichton

Zero Cool is a a rapid-fire thriller from Micheal Crichton written under his pen-name of John Lange while he was in med-school. A riff on the ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances that seems to have shades of North by Northwest to it, the tale follows Dr. Pete Ross, a radiologist on his first…

Easy Go (1968) – Micheal Crichton

Easy Go should have been my favourite of Micheal Crichton’s early novels. Written under his John Lange pseudonym while Crichton was still in med-school, the book includes some archaeology, some Egyptology, and the idea of a heist. Barnaby has discovered the possibility of a lost tomb, an undiscovered cache of wealth and a forgotten king….

Scratch One (1967) – Micheal Crichton

Michael Crichton’s second novel, which he wrote under his pseudonym of John Lange, is a fast-paced thriller that plays on the familiar trope of mistaken identity. This time out an American lawyer, Roger Carr, finds himself mistaken for a high-profile hitman and finds himself stuck between opposing sides in an arms deal which has its…

Odds On (1966) – Michael Crichton

While Michael Crichton was in med school he wrote a series of novels under the pseudonym John Lange, and that seemed like a good place to start if I was going to explore Crichton’s writing, revisit some I knew (like Sphere the other week) and discover some new favorites. Odds On is a crime thriller…