FORGOTTEN BOOK: EASY GO

Easy Go by "John Lange" (Michael Crichton)  (!968; also republished 1984 as The Last Tomb)

Early in his career, beginning when he ws a medical student, Michael Crichton published eight thrillers under the pseudonym John Lange, "for furniture and groceries."  Crichton considered these books the literary equivalent of an in-flight movie:  "I write them fast and the reader reads them fast."   Easy Go was the third novel to be published as Lange, although sources say it was actually the first book that Crichton wrote -- it took him a week.

Harold Barnaby is an Egyptologist with a singular knack for accurately translating hieroglyphics, many of which had previously been only hasitly translated in situ.  One particular papyrus he had come across puzzled him; it made no sense, and clearly ikt was writenn in code.  Barnaby eventually deciphered the code and learned of a hidden tomb of an unnamed pharaoh, which had been unknown for millenia.  The papyrus also gsve detailed instructions (well, detailed for the time; things shift over the centuries) of the tomb's location.  The thought of finding this tomb -- perhaps the last undioscovered tomb in Egypt -- and the possible riched it contained excited Barnanby.

He recruits Robert Pierce, a freelance writer, who has the contacts that Barnaby doesn't -- those who have the knowledge and the wherewithal to loot the tomb without alerting the Egyptian authories.  Pierce goes to Lord Grover, a wealthy and dissolate earl to bankroll the project.  Grover insists on bringing along at least two of his mistresses and his private secretary, Lisa Barrett.  (Lisa is young, attractive, and -- after a somewhat rocky start -- falls for Pierce, and he for her).  Pierce also recruits archaeologist and smuggler Alan Conway and international thief Nikos Karagannis.  The team gets permission from the Egyptian government for an expedition to a remote area of the desert to photograph and translate hieroglyphics from minor tombs, using this as a cover for their actual search for the last tomb.

It is painstaking and weary work, maintaining their cover while trying to locate the hidden tomb, made more difficult by the unannounced appearances of Hamid Iskander, a representaitve of the government's Antiquities Services; Iskander's demeanor as an eager to please official hides a brilliant brain and a watchful, suspicious eye.

The desert is cruel and unforgiving.  Heat, insects, dysentary, the occasional invasion of cobras, and sand blowing everywhere become normal occurances.   After months of false starts, the  tomb's location is found, its entrnce through a small cleft on the side of a cliff 500 feet above the ground.  The cleft is so small that only one man could work it at a time, digging down seven feet before finding the first step that led to the tomb.

Now that they have found the tomb, can they get the to the riches within?  Can they get the loot out of Egypt and safely dispose of it?  Can they outwit and avoid the overly suspicious Egyptian authorities?  Can they even survive the tomb itself, with its deadly traps?

A fast, light read, with the reader's credbility somewhat overcome by the wealth of detail and atmosphere throughout the novel.  This is Gamal Nassar's Egypt, the Egypt that was building the Aswan Dam, the Egypt of extreme wealth and even more extreme poverty, an Egypt of unrelenting peril...A nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

Crichton went on to become an international phenominon, writing The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, and Timeline, among others.  He wrote the screenplays for Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, Runaway, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, and Twister, among others.  For Television, he created the hit series ER.  Thirteen of his novels have been filmed and these films have spawned seven sequels.  Two television series have been based on his films.  During his lifetime, Crichton published twenty-five novels and four works of nonfiction; an additional four novels have been published posthumously, two of which were completed by other authors.  Crichton has received two Edgar awards, the Seiun Award, a Golden Plate Award, a Technical Achievement Oscar, a Writers Guild Award, a Peabody Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, an Audie Award, a BILBY Older Readers Award, and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Journalism Award.  In 1991 he was named one of People magazine's Fifty Most Beautiful People.  Crichton is the 20th highest grossing story creator of all time.

A very private man, Crichton kept his final illness a secret, dying of leukemia on Novembner 4, 200b at age 66.