I recently finished listening to The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton, on audiobook. This is the second Crichton novel I’ve read, having started with Jurassic Park a couple years ago.
The Great Train Robbery is wholly different from Jurassic Park in both style and tone, but the level of detail and research poured into it is an obvious hallmark of Crichton’s I’ve already recognized.
This story recounts in meticulous detail the plot to pull off the greatest heist yet seen in Victorian England: the aptly named Great Train Robbery, masterminded by Edward Pierce in 1855.
The Great Train Robbery was a fascinating story combining court testimony of Edward Pierce’s trial, narrative dramatization of Pierce’s planning of the robbery, and historical context for Victorian England.
Because the story starts off with Edward Pierce giving his testimony in court, the suspense of this story comes from Pierce’s planning of the heist and the final outcome. While it’s obvious he had been caught and arrested, how the heist plays out, how Pierce was caught, and the result of the trial are all left as mysteries until the final chapters.
I found that I particularly enjoyed Crichton’s tangents into the culture and society of Victorian England surrounding the robbery and trial, even if these sometimes felt a little too far afield of the primary story. These sections reinforced my interest in Victorian England from a historical and sociocultural context that I’ve grown into recently. Crichton writes this story with the inquisitive eye and narrative flourish of an investigative journalist, which lends itself to a sweeping narrative that deftly weaves direct readings of the original court testimony with dramatized scenes of Pierce and his accomplices playing out their plot over the course of many months.
Narrator Michael Kitchens recounts the story like a documentary, seeming to speak directly to the listener and invite them into understanding every detail of Crichton’s meticulous research.
Although there were some moments of suspense, I was not necessarily riveted by the story. Still, I quite enjoyed its style and detail.
Steve D
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