Crichton's NEXT

Imagine this. You friend is telling an entertaining story. A bird flies up and begins to quote Shakespeare, sing county music, and mimic the voice of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry.

More than likely, you’d quickly find yourself listening more to the bird and less to your friend.

“Next,” Michael Crichton’s latest techno-thriller is a lot like that. He tells a story so well that Hollywood makes movies of them, stories like Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain. He takes a scientific principle, like dinosaur DNA or deadly virus, and puts it to the fictional test.

“Next” tackles the human genetic code, and to lessen the burden of that weighty and ethical subject, Crichton introduces nearly three dozen named characters and – seemingly – just as many subplots. One of those subplots introduces Gerard the talking bird, who flies in and invites the reader’s attention span to fly out.

The plot centers around a scientist involved in an experiment that has human DNA injected into a chimpanzee. Later, he discovers that the chimp not only survived the experiment, but gave birth to a DNA-enhanced child that talks like a boy, thinks like a boy, and – cleaned up with a haircut, blue jeans and a soccer jersey – looks just like a chimp with a haircut, blue jeans and a soccer jersey.

Or, maybe the plots centers around the president of a foundering genetics lab who’ll do anything to save his company. Or, the single-mom attorney chasing down her son’s kidnappers. Or, the bounty hunter and his assistant. Or, the aging billionaire philanthropist.

You get the idea.

Amazingly enough, Crichton’s style keeps the pages turning, even if it isn’t clear which name goes with what character. “Next” is fun, and funny, with enough of the author’s research facts mixed in to provoke some actual thinking.