Book review: Dragon Teeth

AUTHOR Crichton’s third posthumously-published novel is based on a manuscript written in the mid-1970s.
Yale freshman William Johnson is a bore who boozes, gambles and wrecks his roommate’s yacht. On a whim, he makes a bet with an archrival by ­dropping summer plans for a grand tour of ­Europe to journey west.
The year is 1876, and the West, in young ­William’s estimation, is “a vast desert populated by savage aboriginal tribes”.
But a New Haven gentleman never withdraws a wager, and our hero joins up with the head of the university’s Peabody Museum of Natural History, a paleontologist named Othniel Charles Marsh.
Called the Baron of Bones, Marsh is a cutthroat fossil hunter, who thrives on a relationship with former friend-turned-hated adversary Edward Drinker Cope, whom he believes has sent William to steal his bones.
But despite being based on a pair of real-life fossil ­finders – whose rivalry, known as the Bone Wars, was punctuated by sabotage, spying, and bitter ­accusations – both characters in the book come off as half-baked.
Marsh is a spy-wary lunatic while Cope is an eggheaded ­savant.
We follow William westward into the frontier town of Omaha. As Marsh and crew amble into the ­Wyoming Territory, he arms his dozen student volunteers with Smith & Wesson revolvers.
The Bone Baron absconds before William can make his move, leaving the stranded student to join Cope’s ragtag company.
From there, William encounters buffalo stampedes, ­alkaline dust storms, and scalp-happy Sioux.
Crichton, however, tries too hard to inject a host of ­historical characters into the story: Robert Louis Stevenson, Brigham Young, army generals Philip Sheridan and George Custer, as well as Wyatt Earp.
Dragon Teeth will offer little to Jurassic Park junkies as it has no bite, even with William’s accidental ­discovery of a set of Brontosaurus bones – the titular ‘teeth of dragons’.
Still fans might enjoy the journey and the adventure.
Author: Michael Crichton
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 97800626773354