A Case of Need

A Case of Need occupies an interesting transitional place in the works of Micheal Crichton, and, I have to confess, that, at this point, I have far more questions than answers. The premise of the book is that a young woman has died of a botched abortion and a doctor who performs illegal abortions is charged with the murder. The protagonist, another doctor and a friend of the one charged does not believe the charge is legitimate and sets out to find out what happened.

Even though the book is published under the name of Jeffery Hudson, it is not a major departure from the preceding books published under the pseudonym of John Lange. I am not sure, at this point, why Crichton decided to switch names. I will have to look into that. I heard him say, in an interview, that Jeffery Hudson was a dwarf, and he found that amusing since in real life Crichton was very tall. But that does not seem to be an adequate explanation. The book is a mystery, written in a noir style not unlike Grave Descend, and the protagonist is a doctor, as was the case in Zero Cool. Had this been the last John Lange book, it would have fit right in.

On the other hand, we see some indications of where Crichton will be going in the future. You can see the roots of ER in his unflinching, perhaps even cynical, look at the realities of life in the medical profession. He enhances the credibility of the story by providing abundant medical information. And he takes on a social cause. The book was published in 1968. Roe v. Wade was not until 1973. So illegal abortions were still, very much, a social issue.

I found the book to be a very enjoyable read. As I approached the end, I slowed down not wanting it to end. At the very it weakened a bit almost as though it had to be finished to meet a deadline of some kind. But, overall, it was a delightful book and I will revisit it from time to time in future posts.

Grave Descend

Grave Descend is the second John Lange book to be reprinted by Hard Case Crime. John Lange, of course, is a psuedonym of Crichton's. A couple weeks ago I commented on the exceeding poor writing quality of Zero Cool. But Grave Descend is much, much better. It falls quite a bit short of Ross MacDonald or Robert B. Parker. But, as far as your run of the mill detective stories go, it is quite good.

Grave Descend was published only a year after Zero Cool and it feels like it was written by an entirely different author. This, I believe, supports my claim that Zero Cool was a pastiche. I will go even further out on a limb and say that in places Grave Descend has a distinct Ross MacDonald feel to it and maybe there was a bit of mimicing going on there as well.

It would be fun to get the other Lange books and try to further this line of investigation. Unfortunately, those that remain appear to be quite pricey and I am not going to have immediate access to them. Hopefully, I will stumble on to one or two of them at used book stores or libraries. Or maybe more will be reprinted over time.

But, as of Grave Descend, we can say that Crichton can write a reasonably good detective story and had he stayed with it he probably would have ranked up with the best. Although these books are a bit rough around the edges they are no more rough that the earlier works of many of the masters. But, that was not his fate. Grave Descend was published in 1970. Few people today have heard of it and enven fewer remember it.

A year earlier he published a very different book which most people have heard of, and most people remember. In fact, it would begin to define him as a mainstream science fiction writer and a philosopher of technology. That book, of course, is Andromeda Strain and it would launch Crichton on the path toward literary significance.

John Lange

Before he was famous and before he had decided to eke out a living as a professional writer, Crichton wrote pulp detective fiction under the pen name of John Lange. These works are a little hard to come by as most used copies are collectors items and quite pricey. However, two of them were republished by Hard Case Crime. These two were Zero Cool published originally in 1969 and Grave Descend originally published in 1970. I ordered them and had a opportunity to read Zero Cool over the past week. The thing that struck me most about Zero Cool was the astonishingly poor quality of the writing.

I teach a course in writing and can attest to the fact that first time writers often make some very predictable mistakes. Events and actions are often unmotivated. Characters are non believable. Dialog is cliched. That sort of thing. Zero Cool reads like an undergraduate writing assignment. How could this be?

I should be clear that I am not attacking Crichton's writing ability. Indeed, I use Jurassic Park as an example of consummate writing technique. And, I started reading Grave Descend which is markedly better and published only a year later. In addition, Zero Cool is not his first published novel. I don't have the numbers handy, but it is more like the fourth or fifth. So, what would explain this lapse in writing skill?

I am going to speculate. This is a somewhat wild speculation and hopefully, later, I can accumulate evidence to support or refute it. I think Crichton was trying to write like Dashiell Hammet and doing a horrible job of it. Before I give my evidence for that wild speculation, let me point out that we know, from later works, that Crichton liked taking on writing challenges. Books like Eaters of the Dead, The Great Train Robbery, Travels, and Electronic Life are very different than his usual fare of cautionary science fiction. So, it is not out of the realm of possibility that he would try a Hammet pastiche.

Hammet's most famous work is The Maltese Falcon in which the lives of an odd cast of characters revolve around an elusive object (a statue of a falcon) rumored to be encrusted with priceless jewels. It is a fiction noir version of the Holy Grail. In Zero Cool we have an odd cast of characters whose lives revolve around the pursuit of a similar priceless object the Emerald of Cortez.

The dialog in Zero Cool is often the clipped repartee characteristic of fiction noir peppered with cynical, hard boiled remarks. Only it doesn't quite measure up to the masters. It sounds more like a twelve year old standing in front of a mirror with his t-shirt sleeves rolled up, eyes squinting to look tough, and a pencil hanging out the corner of his mouth to represent a cigarette saying words like doll and dame and don't be a fool.

The characters are also very weak. There are thugs, gangsters, villains, tough guys and mysterious walk-ons. All unbelievable except in the mind of a twelve year old Sam Spade wanna be.

I have to admit that I had to force my way through Zero Cool and was quite disappointed in the writing. I thought he had just not hit his stride yet. I could not understand how somebody who would get so good at this later could start off so poorly. But, when I started Grave Descend and saw the marked improvement, I decide that it wasn't just poor writing as much as it must have been an experiment.