Odds On
Michael Crichton (as John Lange)
278 pages - 1966 - mystery, thriller
December 18th, 2025 — December 20th, 2025
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½
Jurassic Park has been my favorite book since I read it while I was in high school. I thought that along with the brilliant idea of it and the excitement that comes with dinosaurs running amok, it was a masterpiece of storytelling and suspense. I had never read a book that dealt with storylines like that and wove them together so seamlessly.
I have been trying to read Michael Crichton when I can, but I have never gone back to the beginning. This book is Michael Crichton’s first novel, which he published under a pseudonym because he did not want his professors at Harvard Medical School to know that he was “wasting time” writing books. As someone who has written books themself, I cannot imagine doing so while in medical school, much less getting it published. I think from the beginning, that shows that Michael Crichton has talent.
After reading this book, I think I prefer Crichton’s science fiction stories more than his mysteries, but even from the beginning, I think he mastered suspense. The heist in this book is so clearly set up. We, as readers, are primed to think that it’s going to go wrong, and he uses that to his advantage at every turn.
It is definitely an outdated book. It’s unsurprising, since it was written almost 60 years ago; there are some tough-to-read descriptions of women, and multiple uses of a rather derogatory racial slur. But I do think that it still has merit, if only to see where Crichton came from and where he ended his decades-long and quite successful career.
Summary (Spoilers!)
Three men are headed, solo, to the Hotel Reina in Spain, which they are planning to rob together. One of the men, Steven Jencks, has used his computer to calculate the odds of how a robbery will go based on a variety of factors. He’s found the perfect scenario, with a chance of 89% minimum that the heist will succeed, provided most things go well.
Each of the men decides to get close to a woman within the hotel to gather more information. They are also hoping to get to know as many other patrons as possible, so that they can get a feel of who has brought traveler’s checks, money, or jewels to the hotel, and who is not really worth their time.
Annette, the hotel receptionist, cares deeply about the state of the hotel and often works after hours. She is initially hesitant to be seen fraternizing with patrons on the clock, but she becomes less restrained as the book goes on, getting drinks with Bryan in the hotel bar.
Cynthia is a rather promiscuous young woman who also likes to partake in marijuana. She and Miguel grow closer as time goes on, and he starts to have to choose between meeting with her and meeting with the other men to plan their crime.
Jenny is rich and proud, and she has come to Spain with her potential future fiance, Peter, a pimply young man who is definitely not “man” enough for her. She grows incredibly tired of him constantly begging her for more—they do not even sleep in the same room—and she begins seeing Jencks, which causes Peter to grow more and more jealous.
There are some other characters at the hotel. The manager is aloof and unpredictable, coming in a few times despite telling Annette that he would be taking the day off and putting wrenches in Jencks’s plans. There is a man who has some kind of police or military background, sometimes going by Alan Brady, who follows Jencks on his trip towards the hotel. There is a rich older woman who is absolutely obsessed with bananas and sells marijuana discretely.
Jencks details his plan to the other two men, saying that they will have a small window to get everything done. He will rig up some bombs to blow up the bridge, stranding everybody at the hotel, which is on an island. There will also be a fire in the nightclub to distract the hotel staff, and the electricity will briefly go out. During that time, Jencks will rob the large hotel safe, while the other two fleece rooms of patrons that they have deemed to be wealthy and may potentially have jewels or money in their rooms.
They have also hired a taxi driver that will slam a door and drive away from the hotel right before the bridge blows, which will hopefully move the blame away from them and onto the taxi driver or whoever ordered it.
Most of the book is the set-up, as well as some rather detailed scenes of the flings happening within the hotel. When the actual heist begins, though, there are some immediate flaws. They did not realize that there would be a group of police officers there for some sort of party, which causes Jencks to get nervous. The bridge blows, and the electricity goes off, but when Jencks looks into the hotel safe, it is completely empty.
The other two have similar luck, finding absolutely nothing in the rooms they check. When they get together to regroup, they realize that the hotel has already been robbed. They confront one of the women, who goes and alerts the old woman obsessed with bananas, Miss Shaw—she shows up at their room with a gun and a briefcase. There is a scuffle, and the briefcase ends up falling down a staircase, landing in the lobby and opening to reveal that it is full of other patrons’ jewels and money.
Jencks and Miss Shaw talk while at the hotel bar, and they compliment each other on their heisting. Miss Shaw ends up giving Jencks her card, saying that she would be happy to work with him one day. He is also approached by Jenny, who has left Peter and wants to come with him to Rome and wherever else he goes. Eventually, he agrees.
Odds and Ends
There is no doubt that this book is horribly outdated. All of the talk of the computing power is laughable now, as well as some of the considerations they have to make with punch cards and other technologies. Those are some of the more entertaining and harmless pieces.
On the other side, there are some descriptions of the women in the book that are downright hard to read now. They are very sexualized, objectified, and reduced. I’m also not the biggest fan of sex scenes, and this book was rife with them, which could be a positive or a negative depending on your preferences. There were also a few uses of an incredibly derogative slur. Sure, the book is old, but I do not think it has a place in this story.
All that being said, I thought that this book was quite fun. I think it does a great job of setting up how “perfect” the heist is, and as a reader, I think it’s intuitive that it’s going to go horribly wrong. Most of the book is setup, and the last one or two chapters are the actual action, but I don’t think it felt particularly slow.
The characterization is also relatively well-done. I thought that the three heisters were strong in their motives, and the variety of secondary characters, particularly the hotel manager and Miss Shaw, were entertaining. The women could have been more individualized and definitely could have had more agency, but again, I recognize that this is an outdated book written by a white man, so I did not have the highest expectations.
It’s exciting to see how far Michael Crichton went in his career. I can feel the beginnings of his style in this book, which eventually led to incredible stories like The Andromeda Strain or the masterpiece Jurassic Park. I’m mostly excited to read more of his work and see that style develop more and more over time. Even with this criticism I have, I think he is a phenomenal author.
If you’re a mystery buff, maybe this one is not the best for you. The heist, at its core, is entertaining, but there are quite a few holes, and honestly the ending felt a bit rushed and like it was not a resolution at all. However, I thought it was fun, light, and personally I like to see (mildly incompetent) men get their comeuppance.
Total pages read so far, 2025: 14,466
Total books read so far, 2025: 40
Next book: The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan