Book info

• Title Binary
• Author Michael Crichton
• Year 1972
• Genre Thriller

In an age of political unrest, one man aims to bring the government to its knees—and there’s only one agent who can stop him. Wealthy political radical John Wright has taken aim at the US government, believing that only he can make things right. State Department Agent John Graves has been watching Wright for months, studying him, gathering intel, trying to determine his next move before he makes it. Now, after hacking a government computer for secret files and stealing a shipment of VZ nerve gas, a binary agent, Wright has gathered everything he needs to unleash mass destruction on a million people—including the US president. As the clock winds down, Wright and Agent Graves play a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with the fate of the government and a million innocent people hanging in the balance.

Thoughts

A few of the John Lange/Michael Crichton books I’ve read recently have been a bit hard to get into because there have been a lot of characters and threads that need to pull together before you get an idea of what’s going on. This one is a bit more linear, focusing on the investigation into a potential terrorist threat, and you get the jigsaw puzzle pieces at the same time as the detectives, before learning what is going down. It’s great, and this one really felt like it had that technological element that made Crichton so successful later down the line. I loved it.

Rating: 5 / 5