Chasing Crichton

Success!!

My copies of Scratch One and The Last Tomb (previously published as Easy Go) came and I also found Odds On and Drug of Choice for about $50 each. That sounds like a lot for 35+ year old books that average about only 200 pages each, but Odds On was usually in the $200 range when I could find it on sites like Alibris or Amazon Marketplace. Seeing as how these are books I thought I'd never get a chance to read and that I could probably sell them again for roughly the same amount it seemed like a bargain. They both were in surprisingly good shape. The spine on Drug of Choice wasn't even creased! These aren't first printings so that's probably why they weren't in the >$100 range but I don't care. I'm just glad I found them. The only one I didn't get so far is The Venom Business (and it's the last John Lange book that I have to get). The cheapest I found it for was $65; that seems a bit high and to be honest it seemed to be more of the same as Grave Descend and Zero Cool (and Easy Go and Scratch One). I can wait and see if a cheaper copy comes along or if Hard Case Crime does a rerelease. Odds On is different because it was his first book and it's got a heist theme. Drug of Choice has a medical theme (and I do enjoy his MC's take on medical culture). Those two seemed worth the higher price tag.

I'm most pleased that I was able to get a signed book. As I was looking over the ebay listings for books MC signed, I was concerned that there was no way to tell if the signature was a forgery or not. I have a few examples of MC's signature verified by experts online and I could compare them with the pictures on ebay. Of course, the whole point of a good forgery is that it LOOKS correct and I'm no expert so that's not foolproof. Luckily, there are Franklin Library editions of his books that come with a publisher certified signature. Even that concerned me a little as in 1993 there was a "Gift Edition" of Jurassic Park that came signed and billed as personally autographed by MC-- but in reality the 'signature' was an autopen signature. That is, a machine programmed to sign MC's name wrote the signature in those JP books (MC's website confirms this. He regrets the decision to do the autopen edition as one he didn't think through carefully). I was concerned that the Franklin editions were autopen signed. But I did compare pictures of the signatures in some ebay listings of the Franklin editions and there is some variation in the signature so it's highly unlikely that they were signed with an autopen (unlike the JP signatures which were all the same, down to the little loop on the "C" and tick mark as the pen is lifted off the page). If they were, they had to have had different machines with slightly different signature programs. I don't think they bothered to do that. And they do state that it was personally signed by the author, after all.

So $65 and careful scrutiny of the ebay listings later, I am now the proud owner of a Franklin Library signed first edition copy of Rising Sun. I think that I got an awesome deal. Granted, my copy isn't still sealed in plastic nor in perfect near mint condition. I can tell it's been read, the gold leafing in the sides show some dings and rubs and the corners of the cover show some stress. It probably rates as a VF or even F copy. But I like it this way. If it were still sealed in the plastic I'd probably never open it and never be able to see the signature; and my whole object in getting it was to draw inspiration from it by thumbing through it. Plus it's a book that I really like. I had a chance to get a Franklin edition of The Andromeda Strain but I haven't read that one yet. Also, I don't view that book as particularly interesting. Yes, it was the first book MC released under his own name and not a pseudonym but it's just about a modern day plague. The premise isn't particularly novel. Robin Cook wrote Outbreak. I haven't read that one, either (hmm, I guess plague books don't interest me...) but the idea is about the same. Rising Sun-- who else would have written that one?

So I'm happy with what I found. Now if inspiration to write would just strike....