Michael Crichton writing as John Lange...

Scratch One

Michael Crichton writing under the pseudonym John Lange penned eight pulp-style novels while a student attending Harvard Medical School. Scratch One was first published in 1967 later renewed in 2007. It was only in 2014 that I discovered these novels and have managed to read four of them. One can tell this novel is one of his early ones because the plot is a bit messy and takes a while to start engaging in the story. That said, it remains a “page-turner', including all the pulpish characters like a handsome protagonist, an elegant yet psychopathic villain, and stereotypical, beautiful women with perfect bodies and sensual charm. Personally, I call these types of novels my 'great escape' from my somewhat normal existence: pure non-thinking entertainment.

The beginning of the tale presents several assassinations that only come to make sense later in the story. The reader doesn't meet the main actors for many chapters. Although the short chapters on the assassinations were meant to hook the reader, the book dragged until introduced to the main character, Roger Carr, and the evil Doctor Liseau. In terms of interesting villains in the pulp universe, Liseau didn't come across as too cartoonish: elegance, intelligence, style, and pure evil have always been popular attributes of a modern antagonist. Liseau is particularly psychopathic as his methods of torture and murder are especially sadistic and cruel.

Roger Carr is a handsome and slick corporate attorney on a business trip to the South of France to purchase a Villa for his client. Similar to a Hitchcock film, the central thrust is the literary device of 'mistaken identity'. Carr is mistaken by the bad guys and the good guys as a major player in an international gun-running organization and the planned execution of a top seller. Carr is way too slow to realize he's being mistaken for someone else once arriving in France, a slew of meetings and attempted abductions, including the foiled seduction of a buxom agent. I heard myself saying, “Hell Carr, for such a smart lawyer, you're a bit slow off the mark.” To be fair, our protagonist is too week and self-absorbed to be aware of his immediate surrounding. Roger Carr is not your typical pulp hero, but an innocent bystander flowing any way the wind takes him.

Reading this novel on a rainy and cold afternoon, I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Nice and the Cannes Film festival: sunny weather, beautiful people, and visions of the sparkling ocean.

Although certainly not one of the better Lange novels; as a lover of the genre for pure escapism, Scratch One was an entertaining ride.