When cancer took Michael Crichton last November, pop lit lost one of its most original and thought-provoking multi-hyphenates. The "master of the techno thriller" wove complicated technical details (not to mention hot-button social issues and contemporary ethical conundrums) so seamlessly into his deceptively straightforward narratives that many supermarket-rack readers were unaware they were getting schooled in the moral ramifications of industrial-scale genetic manipulation while they stayed up late thrilling to dinosaurs run amok.
Strange, then, that Pirate Latitudes — the first of two planned posthumous Crichton novels, and the only one reportedly completed by the author himself — lacks that intricately layered feel, and comes up light on those passages where the writer steps only slightly away from the plot to incorporate technological, historical or procedural facts every bit as interesting as the action.
This article appears in Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2009.