Richard Moss's Reviews > Odds On

More than half a century ago, a young medical student had his first novels published under the name John Lange.

That man would go on to become the multi-million selling author of Jurassic Park, Westworld, Congo and other novels - but of course under his real name of Michael Crichton.

That early work was forgotten until revived and republished shortly before Crichton's death in 2008.

But if Odds On is anything to go by, it would have been kinder to leave them firmly in the past.

First, it's horribly dated. Its sexual politics are loathsome. He can't describe any woman without lecherously lingering on every curve of her body. One of the female characters is described as a "nympho" who is tortured for information by a man denying her sex (I'm not kidding!)

And then there's the plot. It's a heist supposedly designed to be almost fail-proof by a computer. But this is a 1960s computer, which had a fraction of the processing power of the average smartphone.

It's frankly laughable, makes almost no sense and is immaterial to the overall plot, which involves a raid on a luxury hotel.

It is also peppered with badly-written soft porn sex encounters between the characters. It's clear the young Crichton had decided that to get published this sort of novel needs some sex every forty pages or so to make people forget the risible plot and cardboard cut-out characters. The encounters are unintentionally comedic.

In his defence, Crichton is not setting out to write a literary masterpiece here. This is disposable fare, probably designed to help finance his studies.

But there is a reason why it took decades for it to resurface. It's dreadful, and is best avoided.