Easy Go

March 10, 2014
While Crichton's later work typically involved the grim consequences of combining human hubris and technology, he was also able to thrill while maintaining a lighter touch, as in The Great Train Robbery. Humor and suspense are again mixed harmoniously in this third novel he wrote under the John Lange pseudonym, featuring a team of plotters scheming to steal millions from the Egyptian government. The idea comes from an unlikely source, Harold Barnaby, a 40-something associate professor of archeology in Chicago specializing in deciphering hieroglyphics. While doing research in Cairo, he finds that a papyrus pertaining to "the procurement of firewood for the queen's hot baths" is actually a record of a previously unknown pharaoh's tomb. Estimating that the tomb's treasures might be worth as much as $50 million, Barnaby reaches out to world-wise journalist Robert Pierce to help loot the tomb. Pierce assembles a team, and concocts a plan to carry out the robbery under the very eyes of the authorities. Fans of caper novels such as Eric Ambler's The Light of Day will be happy.