| "He walked to her and bent over, admiring the view, and then his sunglasses, slippery with tanning lotion, fell with a soft plop onto her smooth abdomen." |
Before Michael Crichton scripted blockbusters like Twister and Westworld, penned bestselling novels like Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain and created the TV series ER, he was secretly writing pulp novels to pay for medical school. Under the top secret pen name "John Lange," he cranked out eight novels from 1966 to '72 ... and then vanished. Forty years later, now-bestselling author Michael Crichton brought them back under his real name, personally re-editing and expanding three of them.
In Zero Cool, American radiologist Peter Ross jets off to Barcelona to stick his head in the sand for a month. There he meets a fellow vacationer, Angela Locke and quickly finds himself caught in the middle of two rival gangs searching for lost treasure. From the Spanish beaches to the Parisian underworld and the towers and catacombs of the Alhambra, Ross and Angela must stay ahead of their hunters if they're to get home alive. The heat is on.
In Zero Cool, American radiologist Peter Ross jets off to Barcelona to stick his head in the sand for a month. There he meets a fellow vacationer, Angela Locke and quickly finds himself caught in the middle of two rival gangs searching for lost treasure. From the Spanish beaches to the Parisian underworld and the towers and catacombs of the Alhambra, Ross and Angela must stay ahead of their hunters if they're to get home alive. The heat is on.
WHY I LOVE IT
Like in Dragon Teeth, another one of Crichton's early works, the protagonist of Zero Cool is an ordinary man wrapped up in extraordinary, and desperate circumstances. In this case, a James Bond-esque escape mission involving two European gangs scouring the globe for fabled lost treasure and killing anyone in their way. Weighing in at just under 200 pages with the Crichton-signature quick pace, ever-heightening stakes, and exotic locales, Zero Cool was the perfect summer afternoon read. [JG]
P.S. I've also read the 'John Lange' novel Easy Go and loved it. The story follows a team of smugglers led by an Egyptologist searching for a yet-to-be-discovered ancient temple in the sand.
P.S. I've also read the 'John Lange' novel Easy Go and loved it. The story follows a team of smugglers led by an Egyptologist searching for a yet-to-be-discovered ancient temple in the sand.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
| Michael Crichton (1942-2008) remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year. His novels include Jurassic Park, The Lost World, The Andromeda Strain, and State of Fear, among others, which collectively have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, been translated into thirty-eight languages, and provided the basis for fifteen films. He was also the director of Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, and Looker. |
FAVORITE QUOTES
3. "And then, he saw one girl who was truly spectacular, black-haired and long-legged, wearing a shocking pink bikini. Her eyes were closed to the hot sun; she seemed to be asleep. He walked over to her and bent over, admiring the view, and then his sunglasses, slippery with tanning lotion, fell with a soft plop onto her smooth abdomen."
2. "We must not always be so contemptuous of the past, Doctor," he said. "We may have the advantages of modern science, but they had the benefit of experience."
1. "For Ross, everything had become a nightmare. He wandered frantic through the ghostly buildings, intensely beautiful in the moonlight. Yet he was lost, hopelessly lost. And Angela was gone. He thought of her, the gentle face, the soft skin—and he thought of the bird, plunging relentlessly out of the sky, talons spread, beak forward, ready to pierce and tear."
2. "We must not always be so contemptuous of the past, Doctor," he said. "We may have the advantages of modern science, but they had the benefit of experience."
1. "For Ross, everything had become a nightmare. He wandered frantic through the ghostly buildings, intensely beautiful in the moonlight. Yet he was lost, hopelessly lost. And Angela was gone. He thought of her, the gentle face, the soft skin—and he thought of the bird, plunging relentlessly out of the sky, talons spread, beak forward, ready to pierce and tear."
| "Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree." — Michael Crichton, Timeline |
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