1980 1st year edition; Alfred A. Knopf publishers, New York; Book Club Edition; hardbound in blue and red boards with bold gilt stamp lettering along spine; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket quite good.
Description -
Congo is a 1980 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense tropical rainforest of the Congo. Crichton calls Congo a lost world novel in the tradition founded by Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, featuring the mines of that work's title.
Plot -
The novel starts in 1979, with an abrupt end to an expedition sent by Earth Resource Technology Services Inc. in the dense rainforests of the Virunga region, in the heart of the Congo, when the team is suddenly attacked and killed by unknown creatures – soon, all contact with them is lost. The expedition, which was searching for deposits of valuable diamonds, discovered the legendary Lost City of Zinj. A video image taken by a camera there, and transmitted by satellite to the base station in Houston, shows a peculiar race of grey-haired gorillas to be responsible for the murders.
Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the Lost City of Zinj, where there are believed to be deposits of a certain diamond, the type IIb, which are naturally boron-doped and thus useful as semiconductors, though worthless as gemstones. This time, the searchers bring along the famous White African mercenary Charles Munro, as well as a female gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot.
Time is of the greatest essence, as a rival consortium from corporations in Japan, Germany, and Holland are also searching for the diamonds, turning the entire expedition into a race to the city of Zinj. Unfortunately for Ross and her team, the American expedition encounters many delays along the way, including plane crashes, native civil wars, and jungle predators.
Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the Lost City of Zinj and discover the consortium's camp...