Crichtonverse addition
A new Michael Crichton novel is on the way — cowritten by James Patterson
When I was in high school, one of my favorite go-to writers was Michael Crichton. I absolutely devoured his chunky paperback techno-thrillers: Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Andromeda Strain, Congo, Timeline, and Sphere were like catnip. I fell of the bandwagon a bit with Prey (I remember blowing through it in a day or so and recognized that it just wasn't... good), but I've always been impressed with his ability to turn out a good, addicting yarn.
When he died unexpectedly in 2008, he left behind a massive trove of papers and unfinished maunscripts, which his widow Sherri Crichton has been working her way through, looking for what material is salvagable, and what stories could potentially be continued. There were books like 2009's fun historical romp Pirate Latitudes and 2017's Dragon Teeth, which I found lacking (but it did result in one of my favorite book pictures of all time), while authors like Richard Preston (The Hot Zone) and Daniel H. Wilson (Robopocalypse) were tapped to finish or continue others, like 2011's Micro and 2019's The Andromeda Evolution. Now, there's another new book coming from the late author, to be co-authored by none other than James Patterson.
Jill Goldsmith
According to Deadline (The Wall Street Journal broke the news), the book is a thriller that Crichton left unfinished at the time of his death, about a massive eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano that threatens to destroy the entire world. It sounds like the type of over-the-top plot that Crichton could pull off. The Crichton estate has done well pulling in some good co-authors in the form of Preston and Wilson, but the books lacked some of that magic that those 90s' thrillers enjoyed. Patterson is certainly a get for the estate, and it's a title that I'll be interested to check out when it arrives sometime in 2024. Patterson noted in a statement that he's "particularly excited to be working on this wonderfully prescient novel about Mauna Loa in light of current events. It’s as if Crichton could see into the future, and I’m eager to bring that vision to his readers and to mine."
