HCC-MC8

3 out of 5

Over the course of Michael Crichton’s John Lange books, we can see the author shake off initial pulp genre tropes and punching up his writing style along the way, evolving from heists into more complex elevator pitches, and starting to sprinkle in spicy factoids informed by his background, and the type of accessibly interesting blurbs that will form a good base for the higher profile works under his own name. In short, Crichton used Lange to get his feet under him in writing, and carve out a voice. I’ve never found his works particularly deep or grabbing, but they can certainly be entertaining, and that was mostly true of the early works as well.

Binary, being his final Lange work, is pretty much fully formed. It’s ready for the big screen, and only “limited” in that sense by its relatively short length and small scope of story and characters. But what’s there is primed for bigger things: generic-ass character archetypes with generic-ass names (John Wright, the mustache twirling terrorist; John Graves, the master tactician government agent trying to foil his plans); a big-stakes dumb story (terrorists plan to kill the president!); light political notes to give it timely flair (…because the president’s a commie!); and a shtick: the book is an hourly countdown to an event, and each chapter covers such a countdown.

Once again, it’s entertaining. …But you can hear the bias in my tone: Binary is still a pretty shallow book, and maybe moreso than the other Langes as it has an undercurrent of feeling like Crichton knew he was moving past this genre, but wanted to finish the book, giving it an odd hurry-up-and-wait vibe that conflicts with the intended pace of the shtick. Like there’s a ticking clock, but never really feels like it reaching zero will matter.

Graves is a simple-to-root-for character, though – straight and to the point – and Crichton does a good job of making him the smartest person in the room while still allowing the reader to feel like they’re putting the mystery of the details of Wright’s plan together themselves. And the book’s slightness works in its favor, moving us quickly with little story payoffs and small bursts of action throughout.

My disappointment is partially on me: I was hoping the last proto-Crichton book would be a step up from what came before. It’s a step, but maybe more to the side. Still, that puts it in league with most of the John Lange books at worst, which makes it an entertaining bit of distraction.