Jun 16, 2013 02:00 PM
1485 Views
Published in 1975, this novel was written by my favourite author Michael Crichton and is a thriller novel with a simple style and different presentation and is based on a real time heist. It is based on the great gold robbery of 1855 in which 91kg gold worth $40000000 in today's time was stolen from a moving train. The main culprit was Edward Agar and one of his accomplice who helped was the railway employee William Pierce. They got caught in the end.
Crichton has modified the characters names and also adapted the real story as fiction hence added some extra details and also added some movie touch. Here the main character is Edward Pierce who is a well-settled conman, who has a presence in high class society and he owns a big bungalow in a posh area of victorian England. But he is a conman and he hatch a foolproof plan to steal gold. It was during March 1854 when the banking firm of Huddleston & Bradford was designated to arrange for payment of British troops fighting the Crimean campaign when England and France declared war on Russia. They use to send the gold locked in famous Chubb safes from train. And when Edward devised a plan. There is a foolproof security on train and at station. He arranged a team of expert bad guys- Robert Agar who is a famous safe opener and he can open any safe of the world. He arranged escape of a famous and fast runner thief Clean Willy from Newgate prison so that he could use him in his heist. And then after a full planning and observations of different schedules they perform the robbery. He also employed the services of a railway employee who stands guard with the safes by offering him money in return. To get the full story you have to read the book.
This book is published by arrow books and I got it for Rs.40 as I bought it 2nd hand but it costs me much more since I lost 2 mobiles while purchasing this book and the other 2 Crichton's books. This book grows slowly on you in a step-by-step manner. Why this book is different from other heist books is it concentration on preparation part and the format of telling a story which is interspersed with some comments from historical figures and the story proceeds as a flashback with court proceedings going on. The book is divided into 5 parts with a total of 52 chapters which stretched over 281 pages, it took me 17 days to complete. The ending of the book is filmy style and I liked it.
The writing of this book again tells the exceptional talent of the master story teller Michael Crichton. Each parts describe the type of content it have. 'Preparations' tells about the initial preparations about the heist. 'The Keys' tells about how the important keys were obtained and so on. All parts also divided over the timelines of events, so the book is a slow moving but enjoyable and a good timepass, language is simple.
You can read Michael Crichton any day and any time and over a journey they always provide you a good timepass, so don't miss this one too if you're in a mood of a slow yet intriguing read. My take 3.5/5.
GRuchirG.
Jai Raam Ji Ki :)
