NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: Kirkus Reviews (by Michael Schaub).
lackstone Publishing will republish eight early Michael Crichton adventure novels, which the late author originally wrote under a pen name, Deadline reports.
The books were originally published in the late 1960s and early ’70s under the name John Lange, while Crichton, who would go on to write such bestsellers as Congo and Jurassic Park, was a student at Harvard Medical School. The first, Odds On, came out in 1966, and was followed by Scratch One, Easy Go, and Zero Cool.
In 1969, Crichton published the first novel under his own name, The Andromeda Strain, which landed the author on the New York Times bestseller list.
He went on to publish more books under the John Lange pen name: The Venom Business, Drug of Choice, Grave Descend, and Binary. Kirkus critics had mixed feelings about the Lange books, with one reviewer saying The Venom Business “will leave you cold” and another calling Binary “a high priority-security situation which reads faster than you can think.”
News of the republication of the Lange books comes just over two months after the announcement that thriller writer James Patterson will complete an unfinished novel by Crichton about an eruption of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.
Sherri Crichton, the author’s widow, said that she was “thrilled” to work with Blackstone on bringing the John Lange books back to print.
“It is such an honor and pleasure to see the John Lange books freshly and newly published by Blackstone, to reintroduce these books to fans and also present them to a whole new generation of readers,” she said.
The John Lange novels are slated for publication from June through December of this year.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.