The complete manuscript for ‘Pirate Latitudes’ was found after
the ‘Jurassic Park’ author died-is it a literary treasure or fool’s
gold?
WHEN MICHAEL CRICHTON, progenitor of the techno-thriller and best-selling author of 19 books ranging from “The Andromeda Strain” to “Jurassic Park,” passed away in 2008, an undated, complete manuscript no one knew about was discovered on his hard drive.
That novel is “Pirate Latitudes” (HarperCollins, New York, 2009, 312 pages), a most unusual book even for Crichton’s considerable bibliography. Most of Crichton’s recent work, such as the nanotech-centric “Prey” and his latest, “Next,” which tackled the dark face of genetic tinkering, obsessed about the immediate future rather than the colorful past.
In the 17th-century British colony of Jamaica, the privateer Captain Charles Hunter has been recruited by the colony’s governor to attack the Spanish outpost of Matanceros to seize the treasure aboard a galleon on the island’s bay. Hunter takes his swift vessel, the Cassandra, and crews it with a band of talented rogues: the incomparable helmsman Mr. Enders; the lethal French killer Sanson; the mute brute Bassa; the enigmatic lookout Lazue; and the explosives genius known as the Jew.
What follows is a by-the-numbers pirate adventure, complete with ship-versus-ship combat, swordfights, bad weather, treachery and even a sea monster. Lining them up one after another like obstacles marked on a treasure map, Crichton leaves no high-seas trope unused.
Almost knowingly typical, “Pirate” sails hard and surprisingly straight, making reading an ocean breeze. There are moments when Crichton pauses to elaborate on a seemingly random detail of 17th-century ship life, another Crichton trademark.
Like a real galleon, “Pirate” goes as fast as its captain takes it. Crichton’s protagonist Hunter seems like a prototypical swashbuckling hero, a Harvard-educated yet cold-blooded gentleman handy in a fight with either blade or pistol.
What makes Hunter different is his innovative streak: Crichton arms Hunter with a willingness to constantly try new and untested ideas to get out of the various jams he gets his crew into. He is, in other words, a Crichton version of a pirate king.
The crew members, despite being cut from the same basic pirate-novel template, are quite entertaining. The various villains, particularly the Spanish bogeyman Cazalla, are much more derivative.
This is not going to be the final Crichton book: Someone else will be finishing an incomplete techno-thriller for a 2012 christening.
“Pirate” is Crichton’s last complete book, though the manuscript’s age remains vague; the closest thing Crichton had written would be the 1976 Viking-oriented novel “Eaters of the Dead.”
But for the most part, “Pirate” feels like Crichton lite, almost as if he stashed the manuscript in the hopes of returning to it for polishing later. A fun read, “Pirate” reveals itself to be serviceable but otherwise forgettable, certainly not a fitting way to remember the amazing legacy of the cerebral and original storyteller Michael Crichton.
In the most unusual case of the novel “Pirate Latitudes,” the compelling story-behind-the-story of its discovery turns out to be the literary equivalent of fool’s gold.
Available in paperback from National Book Store.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
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