Dallas Adult Entertainment: Crichton’s ‘Pirate Latitudes’ runs aground
The rapid-fire adventure is also salted generously with sex and violence. Sailors get shot in the head, blood gushes, brains splatter. Eager maidens are disrobed and bedded down without much effort. There’s a gruesome killfest extravaganza near the conclusion that neatly ties up all the loose ends. But it’s action-movie sex and violence: flashy, without repercussions or remorse. These aren’t people getting killed; they’re just pirates.
In all, there’s a lot of pirating stuffed into 320 fast-moving pages, a little bit like the frenzied doctoring that went on in Crichton’s hit TV show “ER,” and it’s hard after a while to swallow all that dying and dramatic rescuing in such a short space. We’re not looking for realism, of course, but all the nick-of-time escapes and rescues strain belief, even by the looser standards of an adventure novel.
Take the climactic scene, maybe the most ludicrous invention in the whole book. Not to give away any surprises, but it entails a bit of trickery involving a makeshift scarecrow and an enthusiastic prostitute. (Scarecrows!) Consider that for a moment, me hearties, and you’ll get a sense of just how loopy a pirate’s life can be.