{"id":1561,"date":"2016-01-07T14:17:14","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T22:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2016-01-07T14:18:24","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T22:18:24","slug":"review-the-venom-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/07\/review-the-venom-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Venom Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\nThe Venom Business<\/a> by John Lange<\/a>
\nMy rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of Michael Crichton\u2019s early \u201cJohn Lange\u201d novels (at least the one\u2019s I\u2019ve read) follow the same pattern: an innocent\u2014but able\u2014man gets caught between dueling criminal factions. He\u2019s pushed back and forth, a pawn in their game, until he decides to man-up and use their own complicated schemes to thwart them. Along the way he meets a stunning\u2014but able\u2014lady, with whom he eventually has sex, although that\u2019s only after he\u2019s bedded a several other easily discarded women.<\/p>\n

Venom Business<\/em> is no different, in this regard. If you\u2019ve read anything else Crichton wrote while he was in medical school, this one won\u2019t be anything too terribly new. The plot this time is a little bit more complicated, which is to say, contrived, which is to say, does not deliver when the climax comes at all. It\u2019s also a longer novel than earlier ones\u2014unnecessarily longer, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

Early Crichton liked to sprinkle in the medical knowledge, lots of Latin, and tries to hang the plot on some of this esoterica, although, again, it\u2019s not really required. At its core, Venom Business<\/em>, like his other early novels reprinted under the Hard Case Crimes imprint, is nothing more (or less) than a pulpy he-man\u2019s novel, a ‘Harlequin Romance’ for guys.<\/p>\n

Which sounds sexist and terrible, but then so are these novels. That\u2019s just the way things were back then, one might say, or that\u2019s just what the genre requires. But these are just excuses, justification for filling out a meager plot that would have done better as long short-story or a novella.<\/p>\n

Its sounds like I\u2019ve got nothing good to say about Michael Crichton\u2019s John Lange works in general, and Venom Business<\/em> in particular, but what I\u2019ve always liked about Crichton\u2014and it shows even in these early novels\u2014is how readable his writing is. I don\u2019t know any other way to describe it. Even in a long, descriptive passage, or when he\u2019s laying down extended exposition, the words just flow by. These books are great to take on vacation, for example, because you can slip into them, get lost, and finish them up before it\u2019s time to go back home.<\/p>\n

And then, when you\u2019re done, throw them away.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Venom Business by John Lange My rating: 2 of 5 stars Most of Michael Crichton\u2019s early \u201cJohn Lange\u201d novels (at least the one\u2019s I\u2019ve read) follow the same pattern: an innocent\u2014but able\u2014man gets caught between dueling criminal factions. He\u2019s pushed back and forth, a pawn in their game, until he decides to man-up and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Venom Business”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-pb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}