Crichton successfully mixes fact with fiction in posthumous novel
With Dragon Teeth, Michael Crichton has come roaring back with an engaging, bookmark-biting historical thriller about one of his favorite subjects — dinosaurs.
This posthumous page-turner (Harper, 286 pp., out of four) is a simply told, somewhat true story of a high-brow, Ivy League scientific mission in the summer of 1876 that transforms into a rollicking, Wild West, coming-of-age adventure. And it’s apparently the curtain call of one of America’s master storytellers, whose blockbusters included Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, The Andromeda Strain and Westworld.
After Crichton died in 2008, his wife, Sherri, discovered the Dragon Teeth manuscript tucked in his extensive archives — notes and research left over from years of brainstorming that contributed to 31 books, more than a dozen films and some 350 TV episodes. What’s intriguing is that Crichton began collecting material for Dragon Teeth back in 1974, meaning it was the inspiration for the Jurassic series.
But don’t look for genetically reborn dinosaurs in Dragon
Teeth. Fossilized dinosaur bones play a role, but Homo sapiens are the deadliest danger. This is the fictionalized account of the reallife, cutthroat rivalry between two of America’s earliest preeminent paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia and Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale.
The setting is the “Bone Wars,” a little-known chapter in American history when pioneering scientists raced to uncover evidence that gigantic reptilians roamed Earth millions of years earlier.
Crichton introduces into this tumult his fictional hero. William Johnson is an arrogant, unbearable Yale freshman, planning a European summer holiday. Thanks to a schoolboy bet, Johnson forgoes cushy Europe for a rougher trip westward with unscrupulous Professor Marsh in search of prehistoric skeletons. To make matters worse, they head into uncharted Indian Territory where the Indian Wars are escalating.
Along the way, Johnson gets caught up in the Cope-Marsh feud, unearths a cliff-side discovery, survives an Indian attack, fights off an ambush and gets stuck in lawless Deadwood.
Crichton thrives on stirring up historical and fictional events and characters, and that’s what makes this novel so rich.
Through all the peril and suspense, readers will especially savor the dramatic changes in Johnson’s character as he grows quickly from snotty, immature jerk to hardened, heroic man.
Dragon Teeth isn’t “literary” fiction. Plain and simple, it’s Crichton fiction — a fun, suspenseful, entertaining, well-told tale filled with plot twists, false leads and lurking danger in every cliffhanging chapter. When you’re done, you’ll wish for more.