Rating: 
Summary: Still a great read.
Review: Michael Crichton has such an amazing talent for blending fact, fiction, science and history. An excellent read.
Rating:
Summary: Crichton at his best
Review: This is early Crichton. Here he took a true story and wove a tale around it. It is not only a good yarn; it is also a drama-documentary about the charatcers, and the society that created them. Victorian society was dynamic and creative, but it was also dirty, bigot, repressed, and violent. Mr. Crichton concentrates on the shadowy aspects of Victorian society, and facts and fiction blend seamlessly into a story that the reader just will not forget.
Rating:
Summary: The best of Michael Crichton
Review: The book is the best of Michael Crichton's work. It follows Edward Pierce, a daring "gentleman" who plans to steal a valuble shipment of gold pay for british troops. This happens in Victorian era england, the same setting as Sherlock Holmes.
Crichton immerses you into the story with excellent description of the era- criminal slang and short asides on aspects of Victorian era culture richen the experience. Ocassional humor and irony keep interest high, it makes for a very fun book.
The plot never lags and builds to a suspenseful ending.
This book is perfect for anyone who has enjoyed any other Crichton books. 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: He wanted the money
Review: The time is 1855 and the place is London. Edward Pierce, a master con artist, wants to hijack 12,000 pounds sterling that is being sent by rail to fund the Crimean War. It won't be easy. The money is locked in a safe, made triple-strong, with four keys, each key stored in a different location. All four keys must be found and copied without raising any suspicion. It's a task that would daunt all but the most capable. Fortunately, Pierce is more than up to the job. He's got several things going for him: a razor-sharp intelligence, nerves of steel, patience, cunning, and not least of all, his mysterious mistress, Miss Miriam. Pierce and his confederates spend a year working on their plans. But things have a habit of going awry at the damndest times. Can they pull it off? Maybe. Can they get away with it? Hmmm....Michael Crichton has written a humdinger of a period suspense novel with telling touches that bring us right into the middle of the Victoria era. For instance, just finding a key in a Victorian living room could be a week-long search, given how cluttered the average living room was at that time. And train travel, still fairly new, was the object almost of worship. A train robbery was infinitely worse than, say, robbing a bank. Who would have the unmitigated gall to rob a train? Well, Pierce would, for one. And why would he commit such a dastardly crime? Because, as Pierce explained, as if talking to a three year old, he wanted the money. As in his fiction books, Crichton's research into Victorian London and train travel is solid, and the book has a sense of unquestionable authenticity. One gets the feeling Crichton had a lot of fun writing it. We see a lot of Crichton himself in Pierce: his intelligence, his wit, his painstaking attention to detail. The book scores both as a good novel and well-researched social history. It's one of Crichton's best.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book....Some Parts Boring Though Too
Review: In my opinion, this book is just, OK. It was a little boring sometimes, but kind of exciting too. I don't think that you will enjoy reading the book. It has a good scheme in it, the robbery was pulled off well. It really depends on what kind of books you enjoy. But, if you like books that have some boring points and not a lot of excitment you will may this book.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Novel; Enthralling
Review: When man first descended from the trees and walked upright, his average speed was 4 miles an hour. In 1800, a man on a horse could travel 10 miles an hour. Then, between 1815 and 1850, the steam engine and the train catapulted the average speed to 40 miles an hour, with a maximum speed of 70 miles an hour. Today, we find such speeds common place. But at the time, all was a complete mystery to ordinary people. For example, falling from a moving train was not generally understood to be fatal. people assumed that falling from a train was much like falling from a horse--it all depended on how you landed. Crichton artfully weaves this type of historical perspective inot a riveting story about the greatest train robbery of all time--which never would have been tried had they understood what they were doing. But in this case, ignorance was bliss, and it worked, against all odds. Not the Crichton you may be expecting...there is science, but it is the science of the 1800's; no cutting edge technology, unless you consider the invention of wax to make keys new technology--which it was; no exotic locales. Instead, Crichton takes us back to England in the 1850's--at the end of the Crimean War, and less than a decade before the U.S. Civil War, and during the hey day of mass industrialization. Crichton does an excellent job of setting the stage and reminding us just where the roots of our current urban society lie, and just how recently those roots were first sunk into the rural past. Having set the stage, Crichton weaves the history with a great crime novel. Taking advantage of wealth, social stratification, and even advanced technology (for the time), Crichton follows a criminal mastermind in his year long plot to steal 12 million pounds sterling, supposed to be used to pay French soldiers fighting Russia in the Crimean war. Trains and safes had both just made their appearances. Fingerprints, combination locks, and explosives were still on the horizon. Breaking into a safe on a moving train was a then unthought of crime. Of course, they were caught--Crichton lets us know right at the beginning that his source is the trial transcripts--but the ways, whys, and means are wholly unpredictable, and will keep you turning the pages right to the very end.
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