The Venom Business by John Lange
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Most of Michael Crichton’s early “John Lange” novels (at least the one’s I’ve read) follow the same pattern: an innocent—but able—man gets caught between dueling criminal factions. He’s pushed back and forth, a pawn in their game, until he decides to man-up and use their own complicated schemes to thwart them. Along the way he meets a stunning—but able—lady, with whom he eventually has sex, although that’s only after he’s bedded a several other easily discarded women.
Venom Business is no different, in this regard. If you’ve read anything else Crichton wrote while he was in medical school, this one won’t be anything too terribly new. The plot this time is a little bit more complicated, which is to say, contrived, which is to say, does not deliver when the climax comes at all. It’s also a longer novel than earlier ones—unnecessarily longer, in my opinion.
Early Crichton liked to sprinkle in the medical knowledge, lots of Latin, and tries to hang the plot on some of this esoterica, although, again, it’s not really required. At its core, Venom Business, like his other early novels reprinted under the Hard Case Crimes imprint, is nothing more (or less) than a pulpy he-man’s novel, a ‘Harlequin Romance’ for guys.
Which sounds sexist and terrible, but then so are these novels. That’s just the way things were back then, one might say, or that’s just what the genre requires. But these are just excuses, justification for filling out a meager plot that would have done better as long short-story or a novella.
Its sounds like I’ve got nothing good to say about Michael Crichton’s John Lange works in general, and Venom Business in particular, but what I’ve always liked about Crichton—and it shows even in these early novels—is how readable his writing is. I don’t know any other way to describe it. Even in a long, descriptive passage, or when he’s laying down extended exposition, the words just flow by. These books are great to take on vacation, for example, because you can slip into them, get lost, and finish them up before it’s time to go back home.
And then, when you’re done, throw them away.