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Title: no longer a novelist
Review: Michael Crichton has become a director, a screenwriter, a producer, and a creator of TV shows, among other endeavors, but he's apparently spreading himself too thin. I enjoy his writing style (loved "Andromeda Strain," "Disclosure," "Airframe," and the first 2/3 of "Jurassic Park"), but he seems to be losing his focus in his novels. "Timeline," like "Jurassic Park," starts out with an extremely innovative plot and then deteriorates into a series of chase and rescue scenes (either dinosaurs or knights on horseback). Crichton is spending less time on character development---you don't really care what happens to any of these two-dimensional folks in "Timeline"---and more on visualizing how this novel will look on the silver screen. This is a major talent who needs to concentrate more on his writing or to give it up for a bit while he pursues other interests. Those of us who buy his books are being cheated by his half-hearted efforts as a novelist.
