At the Yolo County Library recently I came across a 1969 title from Michael Crichton called “Zero Cool.”
Some interesting facts about Michael Crichton…
- He was 6’9″.
- He died at age 66 of lymphoma.
- He got an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
- He left medicine shortly thereafter to write full time.
- His first bestseller was The Andromeda Strain. He went on to collaborrate with Steven Spielberg on the Jurrasic Park movies. He also originated TV’s medical drama “ER.”
- Before all that, he financed his medical education by writing mysteries and thrillers under a pseudonym. He even won an Edgar Award, but never told the docs at Harvard when he went down to New York to accept it.
“Zero Cool” is a thriller about a newly minted physician who goes to Spain to present a paper at a medical conference, but ends up getting tangled in a web of international intrigue over stolen gemstones hidden – at autopsy – inside the thoracic cavity of a dead man. Not your typical thriller plotline, but you can see how Crichton’s personal history worms its way into his fiction.
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With all that in mind, I was delighted to recieve the following from a family member who saved one of my old dot-matrix-printed missives from 1991, the year our second child was born. It came with the comment “You do have a way with words. 🙂 ” Thanks, Sue!
Bonus T-rex cartoon.
