read: pirate latitudes
Crichton reportedly pecked at this novel off and on for nearly thirty years before the completed manuscript was posthumously discovered on one of his computers. As such, it's a competently researched and adequately constructed set-piece delivery mechanism that favorably portends the film adaptation Steven Spielberg, also reportedly, already has dibs on. The nautical yarn begins to fray around the tenth or eleventh climax, and late-period (i.e., quadruply divorced) Crichton's penchant for punishing his token female characters rears its ugly head ("Emily, you are a bitch and a whore but you are not, I’ll wager, a murderer," one character magnanimously informs his adulterous wife—incidentally one of the few women in the novel who isn't an actual prostitute); but compared to the howlingly mean-spirited and terrible Prey and Next, Pirate Latitudes isn't such a bad swan song. Suggested pairing: tepid Virgin America absinthe.