What can I say about Crichton? He is, in my opinion, the master of the thriller. I once saw him on the Charlie Rose show wherein he said that he wrote ‘The Andromeda Strain’ while he was in medical school. I was blown away. How do you make good grades in med school and be writing a novel at the same time? The guy was a genius.
I’ve read most of his books. He’s not much on character development, but he does give the reader a good feel of what the character is feeling through the plot and the conflicts within.
One of my favorites of his is ‘Eaters of The Dead’ in which he relays the story of an Arab emissary who gets taken up with a band of Vikings to go and eliminate the ‘wendol’, or bear-people, from an inundated king’s realm. The character arc of Ahmad ibn Fadlan is amazing. He goes from a man of books and learning to a man of war, ultimately becoming a cunning warrior and a student of the pagan Viking ways. This book was made into a film called ‘The Thirteenth Warrior’, and stays pretty true to the book. I recommend both, and any other of Crichton’s novels, as he was the master of the thriller.
I read once that his motive in writing this book was that a friend dared him to write a version of ‘Beowulf ‘ that wasn’t boring.
Brady's Cellar 