The Great Train Robbery (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Great Train Robbery
First edition cover
Author	Michael Crichton
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Crime novel
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	May 1975
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	266 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-394-49401-6 (first edition, hardback)

The Great Train Robbery is a bestselling 1975 historical fiction novel written by Michael Crichton. Originally published in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf (then, a division of Random House), it is currently published by Avon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. It is the story of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855, a massive gold heist, which takes place on a train traveling through Victorian era England. The great bulk of the book takes place in London.

1 Historical deviations
2 Film adaptation
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Historical deviations

The story is a mild representation of the historical events that happened, although the setting can be considered quite accurate. For some reason, the character names are mixed up in the novel, for example the main protagonists William Pierce is changed to Edward Pierce and Edward Agar to Robert Agar.

[edit] Film adaptation

The novel was later made into a 1979 film directed by Crichton starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland. Unlike the real incident, the protagonists are seen to escape to freedom after the trial. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography Award for the British Society of Cinematographers; the film was also nominated for Best Motion Picture by the Edgar Allan Poe award by the Mystery Writers Association of America. The film score by Jerry Goldsmith was short, but a favourite in the composer's repertoire and an extended version of the music was released in 2004.

[edit] See also

Great Gold Robbery of 1855

[edit] External links

British Transport Police web page about the robbery

v • d • e Michael Crichton

Bibliography

Novels	The Andromeda Strain (1969) • The Terminal Man (1972) • The Great Train Robbery (1975) • Eaters of the Dead (1976) • Congo (1980) • Sphere (1987) • Jurassic Park (1990) • Rising Sun (1992) • Disclosure (1994) • The Lost World (1995) • Airframe (1996) • Timeline (1999) • Prey (2002) • State of Fear (2004) • Next (2006)

Novels written under pseudonyms	Odds On (1966) • Scratch One (1967) • Easy Go (1968) • A Case of Need (1968) • The Venom Business (1969) • Zero Cool (1969) • Grave Descend (1970) • Drug of Choice (1970) • Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1970) • Binary (1972)

Nonfiction	Five Patients (1970) • Jasper Johns (1977) • Electronic Life (1983) • Travels (1988)

Film adaptations	The Andromeda Strain (1971) • Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972) • The Carey Treatment (A Case of Need) (1972) • The Terminal Man (1974) • Rising Sun (1993) • Jurassic Park (1993) • Disclosure (1994) • Congo (1995) • The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) • Sphere (1998) • The 13th Warrior (Eaters of the Dead) (1999) • Timeline (2003) • The Andromeda Strain (2008)

Film writer and director	Pursuit (1972) • Westworld (1973) • Coma (1978) • The First Great Train Robbery (1979) • Looker (1981) • Runaway (1984) • Physical Evidence (1989) • ER (1994) • Twister (1996)