Grave Descend

I have not been fond of the authors books. a few of them I have enjoyed but some of them just or two scientific. This book was very good. I really like the diver and I liked his friend who saved his life several times.. the story was old-fashioned, but it was very good. Had very few bad words in it a very fast moving story not too long but a fun read.. he wrote it when he was new at writing and I think that’s why it was so good, his other books are too deep and scientific and get bogged down and junk. But this one, I recommend anybody read it. It’s good.

When I saw this book was a Michael Crichton, I figured there would be some sort of underwater creature attacking people. I was wrong, but it did turn out to be a pretty good underwater adventure involving theft and corruption. I enjoyed it pretty well. Published in 1970 under a pen name, I found that I really wouldn’t have known it was as old as it actually was. It felt like a Jason Statham movie, and that’s who I pictured while I was reading. I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up more of these older books for a quick read.

I love Michael Crichton and read anything with his name on it, though I realize this isn't the "real" Crichton, since it was long before his science-based bestsellers. The writing in this is fast paced, mostly dialogue, the characters are almost cliches of men's pulp fiction, and the adventure is first rate, full of underwater action.

All that said, I ended up skipping as I read because I was so annoyed with the main character. It was hard to feel too worked up about the danger he was in because there was absolutely no intelligent, or emotional, or ANY reason for him to be involved in the situation. He was smart enough to know that he was being played for a sucker, but decided, oh, well, might as well let them, the money's good. Even though he knew his life and the lives of his friends were on the line.

It was hard to drum up any sympathy for him when he wound up in one predicament after another by blindly and almost passively going along with people he knew were out to deep six him in one way or another. And the fact that he got his friends involved didn't help. At the very, very end of the novel, almost the last sentence, the character finally reveals what his motivation is and it actually makes sense--but by then it's too late. It would have been a far better book if we'd known the motivation from the beginning, rather than making it a cheap twist at the end.

The book flies by, though, with lots of action and some fairly witty moments--I laughed out loud more than once at the main character's hardcase point of view--so it wasn't exactly a hardship to read. I just wish Michael Crichton, at the peak of his powers, had re-written these early books and given them a chance to live up to their potential.