The late author Michael Crichton wrote a series of thrillers under the penname “John Lange” before he became famous for novels like The Andromeda Strain or Jurassic Park.
Hard Case Crime reprinted these books, but they were told not “to breathe a word of his real identity.” The publisher will now release all these books, bringing back some rare Crichton books for readers. Editor Charles Ardai explained in the release:
We’re going to be bringing all eight John Lange novels back to bookstores for the first time in more than four decades – and with the blessing of Michael’s family, the first time ever under the his real name … The books are terrific reads, really delicious examples of Michael experimenting with the genres he would become famous for in later life – you’ll find sinister consequences of bioengineering (on a secret island vacation resort, no less!), you’ll find a race-against-the-clock political thriller penned long before the TV series “24,” you’ll find an archaeology professor hunting for a lost tomb in the Egyptian desert decades before Harrison Ford ever donned a fedora…plus a heist of a luxury hotel planned with the aid of a computer, a case of mistaken identity that pits an innocent man against a league of assassins, and more, all presented behind the gorgeous painted cover art of Greg Manchess and Glen Orbik.