December 27, 2007

The Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery is one of Michael Crichton's earliest novels and appears to be getting another printing these days. It's a little different from his other books, in that it is historical fiction based on the actual train robbery of 1855 where a team of highly skilled and intelligent thieves managed a heist that was almost never solved. It also reads differently as a sort of dramatized documentary. A lot of the chapters are short but heavy on character and plot detail written as someone who is compiling information about the subject for informative purposes rather than entertainment. That's probably part of why I didn't find this book as fun to read as some of his others. However, the amount of research Crichton brought to this book is indicative of the dedication to accuracy found in all of his books.

Posted by josuah at December 27, 2007 3:26 AM UTC+00:00