Eight years ago, I reached out to Michael Crichton – author of JURASSIC PARK and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, scripter of WESTWORLD and TWISTER, creator of the TV show ER -- to see whether he might let us reprint some of the wonderful paperback thrillers he wrote under the top-secret pen name “John Lange” back when he was a student at Harvard Medical School.
I knew the odds weren’t good, since he hadn’t acknowledged those books publicly or let anyone reprint them (at least in this country – I think he may have given the nod to a foreign edition or two). But…nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I wrote to him. And to my delight and surprise he said yes – provided that we keep his secret. That is, he wanted our John Lange books to be published as by John Lange, sort of the way J.K. Rowling recently published her new crime novel as by “Robert Galbraith.” We weren’t to breathe a word of his real identity. Well, of course we said yes, and he and we had a lot of fun working together, first on a reissue of the Edgar Award-nominated GRAVE DESCEND and then on one of ZERO COOL (for which Michael even penned two new chapters set in the present day to open and close the book…the first new writing he’d done as John Lange in more than 30 years!). He enjoyed the new covers Greg Manchess painted for the books and the old-fashioned paperback feel, and we were talking with him about which Lange book to reissue next – ODDS ON or DRUG OF CHOICE? – when he was suddenly taken from us by cancer at the age of 66.
Working with Michael (even if we had to keep it secret) was one of the great pleasures and privileges of my career, and ever since, I’ve wished we could have completed what we began. I’ve also wondered whether Michael might eventually have given in to temptation and written a whole new Lange novel for us -- no less persuasive a figure than Stephen King was encouraging him to do so! Alas, a new Lange novel will never be…but we’re very pleased to announce that five years later we finally will get to finish what we started. We’re going to be bringing all eight John Lange novels back to bookstores for the first time in more than four decades – and with the blessing of Michael’s family, the first time ever under the his real name.
The books are terrific reads, really delicious examples of Michael experimenting with the genres he would become famous for in later life – you’ll find sinister consequences of bioengineering (on a secret island vacation resort, no less!), you’ll find a race-against-the-clock political thriller penned long before the TV series “24,” you’ll find an archaeology professor hunting for a lost tomb in the Egyptian desert decades before Harrison Ford ever donned a fedora…plus a heist of a luxury hotel planned with the aid of a computer, a case of mistaken identity that pits an innocent man against a league of assassins, and more, all presented behind the gorgeous painted cover art of Greg Manchess and Glen Orbik.
If you’re curious to learn more about the books, all eight of them are now up on our website, www.hardcasecrime.com, and you can see the attached announcement we’re issuing later this morning. You should also, of course, feel free to email or call me with questions. If you’d like images of the cover art, feel free to grab them from our site, or let me know if you want higher-resolution copies.
And please, if you think your readers might be excited by this news, share it with them. The first four Lange books hit stores at the end of October, the second four in early November – just in time to be a perfect holiday treat for a Crichton fan, a Hard Case Crime fan, or just a fan of great storytelling.
Hope you’ll help us spread the word.
2 comments:
I read most of the Lange novels years ago when they were first published. Most of them are gems.
Back then someone let the secret out of the bag, because I knew Lange was Michael Crichton.
I read most of them when they came out, too. I thought they were very entertaining.
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