Edgar Award Best Novel Winner
A Case of Need
by Michael Crichton
Summary
Boston pathologist John Berry investigates when a friend, an obstetrician, is arrested for performing an illegal abortion that ends in a young woman's death. Michael Crichton, writing under the pen name Jeffery Hudson while still in medical school, grounds the medical thriller in authentic hospital detail and the ethical tensions of the era. The book reads as both a tight murder mystery and a pointed argument about abortion laws before they were reformed.
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Historical Context & Significance
Michael Crichton wrote the novel under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson while attending Harvard Medical School, several years before he published The Andromeda Strain under his own name.