From Pirate Latitudes to A Murder in Hollywood: Michael Crichton’s Lost Books

Michael Crichton and the long history of Pirate Latitudes.

Tomorrow, Michael Crichton’s A Murder in Hollywood is released by Blackstone Publishing. A completed manuscript originally intended to be published under one of the two pseudonyms Crichton used when he was in medical school (John Lange), writing thrillers to pay his way through college.

Image source: Michael Crichton official Instagram account, in collaboration with Blackstone Publishing, promotional post for A Murder in Hollywood, posted April 14, 2026.

This is the 5th posthumous book by Crichton, following Eruption, published in 2024 and co-written with James Patterson. I’ll be honest, that one was a bit of a disappointment. I’m not a huge Patterson fan, and I felt the blending of their two storytelling styles didn’t work well.

Yes, they both write lean, but Crichton can build suspense and characters, unlike Patterson. Also, Crichton cares about details and exactitude, and Patterson… not so much.

This new novel should be more exciting.

On the eve of its release, it got me thinking about the first posthumous book, Pirate Latitudes, published in 2009, a year after his death. It was a completed manuscript. In a 1979 interview, “Ready When You Are, Dr. Crichton” by Patrick McGilligan, Crichton is described as planning to “complete a long-standing book project about Caribbean pirates in the seventeenth century.”

In 1981, Crichton mentioned the book again in Wayne Warga’s Los Angeles Times interview “Fact, Fiction Intertwined by Crichton”:

“I’ve been working on a pirate story set in the seventeenth century, but it has been tough work. I spent a week trying to figure out what people had for breakfast then, and I couldn’t even find out if breakfast existed at that time.”

The book had likely been completed for almost 30 years before publication.

It makes you wonder how old A Murder in Hollywood is and how many more manuscripts Crichton might have in an attic or drawer somewhere. It takes a lot of time to write a book. Sometimes, even ones we finish end up in a drawer waiting to be rediscovered.