In the late 1960s and
early 1970s Michael Crichton published eight thrillers under the pseudonym John
Lange. The Lange novels are something
very different than the science fiction Michael Crichton became famous for writing. They are thrillers more in the vein of
Desmond Bagley, Jack Higgins, and Gavin Lyall, and I like them much more than
Crichton’s big bestsellers.
Harold Barnaby is an
Egyptologist in an age when nothing new or interesting is happening in the
field. His specialty is hieroglyphics,
and while translating a text he discovers a reference to the tomb of an obscure
Pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings. In earlier
years Barnaby dreamed of the glory of discovering an Egyptian tomb, but now, at
the age of 41, he is less interested in glory and more interested in
wealth. He approaches a freelance writer
named Robert Pierce with an ambitious plan to loot the tomb, which he estimates
to be worth, in 1968 dollars, $50 million.
The novel is written in
third person, and is structured in three titled acts—The Plan, The Search, and
The Last Tomb. The scene titles are self-descriptive. The Plan introduces the genesis of the idea,
the plan, and the compilation of the team.
The team arrives in Egypt in the second act, and the third act is the
resolution.
Easy Go
is all story. It opens with a flash, and
it races from the first page to the last.
The setting is surprisingly rich, and provides, in stark prose, the
sounds, smells, and sights of the land—
“The land was flat, desolate, windy;
there was no vegetation, no sign of life.”
“The modern traveler’s first view of
Egypt is appropriate: Cairo airport, set out in the flat, brown sand of the
desert stretching away in silent heat for miles. It is a landscape that communicates, quite
distinctly, a sense of agelessness, unchanging, interminable.”
“The villages were all the same—mud
huts, dusty streets, and date-palm trees, stately camels and barking, hungry
dogs.”
Easy Go
is a thriller as thrillers were meant to be.
It is quick, light, and entertaining as hell. There isn’t the slightest bit of character
development, but it is populated with an exotic group of characters. There is the wealthy British nobleman
financing the operation on a whim who travels with, at a minimum, two young
ladies, there is the smuggler, and the thief.
It is exciting, and with just enough of a twist at the end to bring a
smile.
Easy Go was
originally published in 1968 by Signet and it was republished as The Last Tomb by Bantam in 1974. It was
reissued as with its original title by Hard
Case Crime, along with Crichton’s other John Lange titles, in 2013.
3 comments:
I no longer have them, no longer recall anything about them, but I read most of Crichton's "John Lange" novels more than a few decades ago and enjoyed them quite a lot.
It looks like HARD CASE copied that cover from a great Marvin Albert paperback called VALLEY OF ASSASSINS by Ian MacAlister.
Ben, I don't think I have read Crichton under the John Lange pseudonym but I absolutely enjoy reading his novels, both for story and style. I find his books riveting.
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