A Case of Need is a mystery novel written by Michael Crichton under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson. It was first published in 1968 by The World Publishing Company (New York) and won an Edgar Award in 1969. The novel was re-released in 1993 under Crichton's own name.
The novel is a medical thriller in which a Boston pathologist, Dr. John Berry, independently investigates the death of a young woman, Karen Randall. Berry becomes involved when his frie...
more
A Case of Need is a mystery novel written by Michael Crichton under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson. It was first published in 1968 by The World Publishing Company (New York) and won an Edgar Award in 1969. The novel was re-released in 1993 under Crichton's own name.
The novel is a medical thriller in which a Boston pathologist, Dr. John Berry, independently investigates the death of a young woman, Karen Randall. Berry becomes involved when his friend Dr. Arthur Lee is implicated in Karen's death: Lee is accused of performing the abortion on Karen Randall that led to her death. Crichton's later novels are preoccupied with technology: his novels can be extended examinations of the morality and implications of a particular innovation draped over the structure of a thriller novel. In A Case of Need, however, it is a medical practice and not a techological innovation that is at issue.
Dr. John Berry, the protagonist, is a pathologist working in Boston during the 1960s, a time when abortion...
less
