Michael Crichton is gifted. He has been criticized as shallow. He has been accused of writing the pulp of the day: you read it once and forget about it. My senses say that is an unfair classification. Every time you open a Crichton book, a torrent of conflicts and ideas swarm your head. The characters are not drawn with the same care or depth say, Stephen King may do, but with pure rapid-fire fiction, Crichton has few peers. On visit to a wonderful used book store, I picked up an old copy of the 1992 release RISING SUN. Memory served fond memories of the book and I was eager to see how well the material had aged. The successor to the immensely satisfying Jurassic Park, RISING SUN is yet another cautionary tale of technology and human relations gone horribly wrong.
Much like Oliver Stone did when jumping from PLATOON to WALL STREET, Crichton has decided to move his narrative from the jungles to the skyscrapers. The premise of RISING SUN is no less intriguing than dinosaurs. Sounding almost like a Die Hard sequel, in downtown Los Angeles on the 46th floor a stunning beauty has been found dead on a shiny boardroom table of a Japanese high rise and who may, or may not be murdered. Only meters below a large party of who's who in L.A. parties the night away as Police Liason, Peter Smith and Japanese Expert John Connor comb the building and the city in a race to find the killer. Sex, greed and the war of business and culture all fuse into a mind boggling chase through hallways and computer screens. So who exactly has Crichton teamed us with to solve this crime?
Peter Smith, or kohai, is our humble narrator, his testimony about the investigation serves as the structure of the book. Crichton has used faux technical papers as story material in the past for his novels, and the police file serves as our entry to the case in RISING SUN. Smith is divorced and a single parent to a young girl. His wife Lauren, Laurel or Laura, I honestly can't recall which one, is a hot shot down at the D.A.'s office and serves only to create some trouble when the novel slows down in the middle act. While the divorcee creating trouble plot is DECIDEDLY unoriginal, some of the accompanying dialog is quite good such as when Smith is asked why he and the former misses divorced he only replies, "Why does anybody get divorced?" I can't quite argue with anything there. It serves also to note, Crichton himself was married five times, so there is probably more than cliche here. There is yet another occurrence of the slimy newspaper reporter, a device almost as common as the names Sanders and Levine in Crichton's books.
Smith, however is appropriately named. He is merely our window to the action and as characters, he and his ex wife are quite forgettable and useless to the plot. The real meat is with the amazing John Conner. When the vastly inferior feature film RISING SUN was released, Sean Connery assumed the role of Captain Conner. Crichton went on to say the Connor role in the book had been constructed from the beginning with Connery in mind, hence the name relation. I can think of no other actor more appropriate. Connor is cunning. His extensive knowledge of the japanese and his self assigned role of senpai to Smith gives the book a true window into the culture Crichton seems so fascinated with here. It is only Connor who truly knows what is going on, he alone can manage fast Eddie, the pragmatic party boy from Osaka who holds the keys to the puzzle. Connor is a truly amazing creation and will not soon be forgotten.
When the novel was released in the early 90s, the topic of Japan-bashing became a controversy surrounding the book. Crichton weaves many themes in his novel and the reality of foreign corporate ownership of our US of A and the stern Japanese business culture roused many opinions in 1992. In 2007 things are maybe a little different. I think the scare of foreign ownership is largely gone. While I have no idea how much the Japanese own today, I can say people probably don't really care who owns what anymore. I would say if drug-scares and corporate culture scares ruled the late 20th century, then the early 21st century is clearly ruled by one thing, namely indifference. So while the novel's Lion of social commentary may largely be tamed, how does it hold up as fiction?
It holds up like the hoover damn I think.
Time has made this novel probably better than it was 15 years since its first printing. Aging the story has minimized the focus of the Japanese takeover theme leaving the reader to simply concentrate on the content of the story-telling. And it is here RISING SUN has few equals. This is simply one of Crichton's finest works. The novel easily bests his other quasi reality based page-turners such as Disclosure and Airframe. The tight plotting and brutal pace in the narrative are easily on par with JURASSIC PARK. Only when you get 3/4 of the way through does the book bog down a bit. Here Crichton puts the breaks on as he has probably told the reader too much too soon, too quickly. For a hundred pages or so, Crichton works to shore up the depth of his story and though some of it is helpful in fleshing out the story, it does slow the narrative down.
Weighing in at just under 400 pages in paperback, you can gulp down RISING SUN in a few hours. It is a stunning piece of fiction. This is not Thomas Wolfe or Alexander Dumas, but that doesn't mean its any less relevant. Though the insights into the Japanese are fascinating, his lectures on photo and digital video manipulation are just as relevant and true today as they were when the book was printed. In many ways, Crichton is one of the few truly forward looking writers. The world is better to have Cricthon's books on shelves. The fact is, I don't always have the mental discipline to read thickets of classical literature. The fact is no matter how well they demonstrate their mastery of the English language, I can't read Melville or the meandering Hemingway more than once. The fact is I can take down a Crichton book over and over again. Crichton is a brilliant man with a talent all his own at melding science and social issues into juicy narratives. RISING SUN is fun, fast and insightful. The fact is RISING SUN is roaringly good fiction and no amount of comparisons or qualifications are necessary beyond that simple statement.
Sometimes a good is just good.
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