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Amazon.com Review
If you saw the 1995 film adaptation of this Crichton thriller, somebody owes you an apology. While you're waiting for that to happen, try reading the vastly more intelligent novel on which the movie was based. The broad lines of the plot remain the same: A research team deep in the jungle disappears after a mysterious and grisly gorilla attack. A subsequent team, including a sign-language-speaking simian named Amy, follows the original team's tracks only to be subjected to more mysterious and grisly gorilla attacks. If you can look past the breathless treatment of '80s technology, like voice-recognition software and 256K RAM modules (the book was written in 1980), you'll find the same smart use of science and edge-of-your-seat suspense shared by Crichton's other work. --Paul Hughes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
Entertainer-educator Crichton, that clever devil, has done it again - by dressing up one of the oldest book/movie scenarios around with enough capsulized science, history, and geography to keep readers happily on their toes. It's an expedition to darkest Africa, to the northeast corner of the Congo rain forest in Zaire, in search of a lost city (Zinj) full of diamonds and danger. Old hat, right? Wrong. Because this expedition, led by Karen Ross of Earth Resources Technology Services (ERTS) in Houston, is the nth degree in hi-tech - portable computers, laser-beam navigation, satellite TV-hookup with Houston - and the juxtaposition of super-gadgetry with nature at its wildest is simply splendid. Furthermore, since a previous ERTS trek to Zinj was decimated by gorilla-like creatures (according to videotape analysis), primate expert Peter Elliot is along; and with him is adorable gorilla Amy - who understands English and is fluent in sign language. (By coincidence, Amy's been having nightmares about a city that looks just like legendary Zinj.) So there's lively lecture material a-plenty - computers, zoology, linguistics, Congo botany, etc. - as Karen, Peter, Amy, and mercenary Munro (what used to be the Robert Shaw role) head towards Zinj via parachute jump, river-rapids, and mountain-climbing. . . while fending off cannibals, an angry hippo, guided missiles, and sophisticated sabotage by a rival German-Japanese team. (The Zinj diamonds are the raw material for computer-chips that will revolutionize everything.) And when they do arrive at Zinj, where the rival team has been massacred, the ERTS team is soon under attack by this odd mutant killer-gorilla species - descendants of apes who were long ago trained to be ruthless guards of the diamond hoard. Thanks to Amy, however, the team learns enough gorilla lingo to drive the killers off, they find the diamond lode, Karen insists on blasting - and so a nearby volcano erupts, necessitating a balloon-escape finale for this thoroughly diverting diversion. True, Crichton's short-chaptered, constantly challenging smorgasbord approach doesn't quite disguise the lack of genuinely developed storytelling here, and one ends up feeling just slightly cheated: many of the provocative questions raised are never really resolved. But Dr. C. is one of the world's great explainers. And his fascinating lineup of scientific toughies-made-easy, along with the African scenery and the agreeably sentimental Peter/Amy relationship, makes this - page for page - the classiest junk-food entertainment in quite some time. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Deep in the African rain forest, near the legendary ruins of the Lost City of Zinj, an expedition of eight American geologists is mysteriously and brutally killed in a matter of minutes.

Ten thousand miles away, Karen Ross, the Congo Project Supervisor, watches a gruesome video transmission of the aftermath: a camp destroyed, tents crushed and torn, equipment scattered in the mud alongside dead bodies -- all motionless except for one moving image -- a grainy, dark, man-shaped blur.

In San Francisco, primatologist Peter Elliot works with Amy, a gorilla with an extraordinary vocabulary of 620 "signs," the most ever learned by a primate, and she likes to fingerpaint. But recently, her behavior has been erratic and her drawings match, with stunning accuracy, the brittle pages of a Portuguese print dating back to 1642 . . . a drawing of an ancient lost city. A new expedition -- along with Amy -- is sent into the Congo where they enter a secret world, and the only way out may be through a horrifying death . . .

From the Inside Flap
The legendary ruins of the Lost City of Zinj have seen an eight-person field exhibition die. After startling discoveries, a new expedition is sent back into the Congo--its mission, to descend into the secret world where the only way back out may be through the grisliest death.... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Michael Crichton, who died in Los Angeles on November 4, 2008, was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. His most recent novel, Next, about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.

Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton's 2004 bestseller, State of Fear, acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios. He predicted future warming at 0.8 degrees C. (His conclusions have been widely misstated.)

Crichton's interest in computer modeling went back forty years. His multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard, was published in the Papers of the Peabody Museum in 1966. His technical publications included a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Crichton's first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. One of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.

He had a lifelong interest in computers. His feature film Westworld was the first to employ computer-generated special effects back in 1973. Crichton's pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1995.

Crichton won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. He had a daughter, Taylor, and lived in Los Angeles. Crichton remarried in 2005