A Case of Need
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| A Case of Need | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Michael Crichton |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Signet |
| Publication date | 1968 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 416 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-451-21063-8 |
A Case of Need is a mystery novel written by Michael Crichton under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson. It was first published in 1968 and won an Edgar Award in 1969.
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.
[edit] Plot summary
The protagonist, Dr. John Berry, learns that his friend, an obstetrician named Arthur Lee, has been accused of performing an illegal abortion that led to the death of Karen Randall. Berry sets out to clear his friend of suspicion. Unfortunately for Lee and Berry, Lee is known in the medical community as an abortionist. Berry also has a personal stake in the outcome of the case: Berry helps Lee disguise medical samples to hide the fact that Lee's dilation and curettage patients were pregnant. In the course of his investigation, Berry runs up against the powerful Randall family, an established Boston medical dynasty. He also gathers a portrait of Karen's past, psychology, and character.
[edit] Major themes
The morality of abortion is the primary theme of the novel. Despite acknowledging the metaphysical arguments against abortion, Crichton never fully confronts them or attempts to disprove them. The tension between the arguments for and against abortion gives the book the gray-area milieu of a noir novel. A Case of Need has several similarities to a noir novel: its investigative structure; the clean, utilitarian prose; Dr. Berry's encounters with Boston's seamier inhabitants. In addition, Karen Randall's heightened sexual activity can be seen as a reference to General Sternwood's nymphomaniac daughter in Raymond Chandler's classic novel, The Big Sleep.
Racial politics is a less prominent but recurring theme. It appears almost immediately with the revelation that Arthur Lee is half-Chinese. Berry discovers later that Karen had sexual relationships with a Jewish athlete and a black musician, both taboo for a member of a white, conservative, established Boston family in the 1960s. Later, Lee's attorney, George Wilson, is described as "a kind of freak, a product which society had suddenly deemed valuable, an educated Negro."
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