John Lange/Michael Crichton

I was interested to learn that Hard Case Crime books (the publisher of Stephen King's Joyland) will be publishing all of Michael Crichton's hard-boiled detective novels that he wrote under the pseudonym John Lange. Apparently, he choose his pseudonym because "lange" in German, Danish, and Dutch means "tall one", and he was 6'9" (thanks to GoodReads for this information). I have read most of Crichton's science fiction novels, my favorite being The Andromeda Strain, but I have never  read any of his crime novels.

Crichton wrote these books while a med student at Harvard Medical School between the years of 1966 and 1972. Hard Case Crime previously published two of these books, Grave Descend and Zero Cool, under the name of Lange.  After Crichton's death in 2008, his family authorized Hard Case Crime to reprint all eight Lange novels under Crichton's name.

The novels being released in October and November are Grave Descend, Zero Cool, Easy Go, Scratch One, Binary, Odds On, The Venom Business, and The Drug of Choice.


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