Michael Crichton’s posthumously published new novel, Pirate Latitudes, is set in the Caribbean. The reviews have been mixed, but Steven Spielberg has already bought the film rights, which is in and of itself a guarantee of success. Here is, in part, what the Detroit Free Press had to say about the book. The link to the complete review is below:
It’s set in 1665 in Jamaica and the Caribbean islands, and it concerns exactly what you would expect: high-seas adventure, a treasure galleon and a whole boatload of swashbuckling. It’s only a little disappointing not to find anyone walking a plank or singing a sea shanty.
Our main character, Captain Charles Hunter, may not have a parrot on his shoulder or mutter anything about his hearties, but he’s certainly a pirate. He’s commanding, imperious, irresistible to various lasses and wenches, and singularly determined to capture a Spanish galleon loaded down with treasure.
Crichton, who usually took some scientific research or historical fact as a jumping-off point, probably has some solid stuff in this book about sailing, piracy and 17th-Century mores. Maybe English gentlemen of the time actually used ground earthworms to keep their hair from turning white, or used powdered rabbit’s head as toothpaste, or treated gout with the oil of a red-haired dog.
Once the main story sets sail, Crichton jumps from one spectacular adventure to another without pause, drawing a straight line from the crew’s capture and escape to the theft of the treasure ship, the ensuing chase and the sea battle — followed, of course, by the requisite hurricane, then cannibals and sea monsters.
The rapid-fire adventure is salted generously with sex and violence. Sailors get shot in the head, blood gushes, brains splatter. Eager maidens are disrobed and bedded down without much effort. But it’s action-movie sex and violence: flashy, without repercussions or remorse. These aren’t people getting killed; they’re just pirates.
In all, there’s a lot of pirating stuffed into 320 fast-moving pages, a little bit like the frenzied doctoring that went on in Crichton’s hit TV show “ER,” and it’s hard after a while to swallow all that dying and dramatic rescuing in such a short space. We’re not looking for realism, of course, but all the nick-of-time escapes and rescues strain belief, even by the looser standards of an adventure novel.
http://www.freep.com/article/20091129/FEATURES05/911290308/1030/Features05/Pirates-behaving-badly