Grave Descend

Way back before he wrote blockbuster bestsellers like Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton wrote pulps under the pen name John Lange. These books were out of print, hard to find, and very expensive until recently when publisher Hard Case Crime began to reissue attractive paperback editions. In Grave Descend, diver James McGregor is hired to explore the wreck of a luxury yacht, but the whole thing smells fishy from the start. Nobody who was on the boat seems to be telling the same story and the supposed insurance adjuster has far more information on the wreck than he should. When the Jamaican police get involved, McGregor knows he should probably just walk away, but his curiosity won't allow it. Soon, he finds himself neck deep in danger and double crosses. This is a short, spare novel filled with tough guys and bad girls in the classic pulp tradition. At just 202 pages, it's a quick read, skillfully building the intrigue before the dangerous climax. One other John Lange novel (Zero Cool) is currently available from Hard Case Crime and, based on my reading experience this time out, I'll be on the lookout for his others in the coming months.

Pros: Fast-paced, readable, never boring. No padding or extra fat on this one. One surprise twist at the end. Intelligent ruthless villain. Sharks. Cons: Not a lot of depth, occasionally confusing, some character motivations rather fuzzy. Bottom line: Highly enjoyable way to while away a Sunday afternoon.

This is a very well written, exciting story of sunken treasure. There aren't all that many novels written about sunken treasure - and of those there aren't all that many that are good. With accurate details. This one is all that - and highly recommended!

In a relatively short time, Hard Case Crime has become well known for periodically exhuming classic works of crime fiction and giving them the distribution and packaging they deserve. This month's exhibit is GRAVE DESCEND by John Lange. The cover, I would submit, speaks for itself, standing out on the shelf like a rose among a garden of weeds. The contents within are up to the billing. GRAVE DESCEND was nominated for an Edgar Award, which no doubt surprised and delighted John Lange, who was busy at the time doing other things besides writing. "John Lange" is in fact a pseudonym for a gentleman who later became a phenomenally successful author with crossover success in film and television. I'm not stating his name simply because I don't want it to detract from this book, which is a work of such quality that it deserves to be judged on its own merits. It begins with a mystery of sorts. James McGregor is a deep sea diver who ekes out an existence in Jamaica running an undersea salvage company. McGregor's best days are behind him; even so, he somewhat reluctantly agrees to the proposition of Arthur Wayne, a mysterious stranger who is a mass of contradictions. Wayne holds himself out as an insurance company representative who wants McGregor to undertake a recovery operation on Grave Descend, a luxury yacht that, McGregor is told, has just sunk off the coast of Jamaica. McGregor reluctantly agrees, even as he learns that practically nothing Wayne has told him is true. As McGregor becomes more deeply involved in the project, he finds that he is not only being misled but is also being set up. Lange devises quite an interesting scenario here. McGregor is neither rich nor a rocket scientist; the people who are using him are wealthy and intelligent, with an apparent infinite supply of resources. McGregor has friends, a journeyman's working knowledge of his field and the ability to think on his feet. It makes for an interesting battle of wits, and more. Ultimately, Lange's narrative strength makes GRAVE DESCEND the readable, accessible work that it is. The author mixes background subject matter --- Jamaica, deep sea diving, World War II --- with interesting characters and an exotic plot to create an ultimately timeless novel. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

"Every story was different, and they were all, to his ears, improbable. But not like the Grave Descend. That was not merely improbable; it was weird. Even the name of the ship was weird." -- from Grave Descend Author John Lange is actually the pseudonym of a massively bestselling author whose name you would instantly recognize if I chose to reveal it. Hard Case Crime, seeing the first reprints of Lange's books since their original publications, would like us to respect his privacy, but as we all know, there are no secrets on the Internet, and his identity is only as far away as a single click. Coincidentally, John Lange was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Grave Descend. The author actually won the Edgar for another novel he wrote around the same time under a different pseudonym. (He has also won one under his own name, but not for a novel.) Jim McGregor, a diver by occupation, is hired to investigate the sinking of the Grave Descend, a luxury yacht with an unlikely moniker (it's actually a quote from Samuel Johnson, the source of all the epigraphs in the book), off the coast of Jamaica. The main trouble is that McGregor can't seem to get a straight series of events surrounding the sinking -- everyone has a different take on what happened, even where the boat went through customs. To make things more difficult, the sinking is being kept from the press for 24 hours due to the presence of the boat's single passenger, Monica Grant, who is not only striking beautiful (especially in a bikini) but is also the "good friend" of the boat's married owner, Robert Wayne. McGregor discovers a few other details while involved with this mysterious crew, and begins to piece together a puzzle that's got his name written all over it. John Lange offers up a straightforward, taut thriller with no frills but more than a little John D. MacDonald in its pedigree. The short chapters and reliance on dialogue make the relatively complicated plot flow easily and quickly toward its conclusion. A slight but entertaining piece of escapism, Grave Descend is likely to pass through your mind without touching much along the way. It's by no means a crime classic, but it's completely engrossing during the reading -- I finished it in just a couple of hours and I don't imagine it took Lange much longer -- there's just not a whole lot of substance. I'm even having trouble coming up with things to say about it, but fans of MacDonald and Richard Stark could do worse than to take a short cruise aboard the Grave Descend. Just watch out for those hammerheads.