Michael Crichton – Evening Satellite Publishing

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

I just finished listening to Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton on Audible, a book I probably should have read years ago, but I’m glad I finally checked it off my list.

Jurassic Park the movie is one of my favorites ever, so I was excited to finally read the original novel that inspired it — and compare how the film adaptation differed from the novel.

I really enjoyed this book and basically couldn’t put it down for a few days. Overall, the characters each had unique voices, and the plot was compelling.

To my surprise and enjoyment, the first part of the novel builds up the background of Ingen, Hammond, and some other key players. There is a fair amount of techno jargon, but Crichton writes it in such a way that is accessible and, just as importantly, believable, at least as far as science fiction can be believed. These sections serve to enliven the story as it progresses, providing the reader with much-needed context to feel the weight of the story.

These early sections are then interspersed with vignettes of doctors or others encountering unidentified “lizards”, but none of the characters are able to piece together the clues. In this way the tension very slowly builds.

By the time the main characters arrive at Isla Nublar to tour the park, the reader is nearly overwhelmed with dread over the mystery “lizards” terrorizing the local population, the industrial espionage of a rival bioengineering company, and the shady, or perhaps negligent, designs of Hammond and the creators of Jurassic Park.

The story is incredibly layered with detail about all of the flaws with the park. There is no fatal flaw, but there are many tiny ones that create a perfect storm of a disaster, isolating the characters on this island in a nightmare scenario.

The action was thrilling but not overwhelming, and the plot kept pace as the situation continued to unravel. Ian Malcom’s continuous diatribes about chaos theory could be tiresome for some readers, but I found these more philosophical sections quite engaging.

The narration of the audiobook was great as well.

Regarding the film versus the novel, I find it quite remarkable how well the film adheres to the spirit of the novel, even if several key characters and plot points are either changed or omitted entirely. Those types of changes are to be expected when adapting such a detailed novel to film, but it only makes me enjoy the movie more knowing that it is a worthy reflection of Crichton’s story, even if it looks a little different.

Steve D