RIZKY ANTHONI

1111014000037

5A

Book title

: The Great Train Robbery

Author

: Michael Crichton

Publisher

: Arrow Books

Date

: 1995

Number of pages

: 281

Genre

: Fiction

Book Code

: PT 823 CRI g

The standout characters in the story are Edward Pierce, a charismatic and
affluent "cracksman" or master thief, makes plans to steal a shipment of gold worth
more than twenty five thousand pounds being transported monthly from London to the
Crimean War. He recruits Robert Agar, a "screwsman" or specialist in copying keys, as
an accomplice to open the locking gold in two heavy safes, each of which has two locks,
thus requiring a total of four keys to open it. Then he recruit a "snakesman", a burglar
able to slip inside buildings through small and cramped spaces nicknamed Clean Willy
to copy the most difficult keys to copy which the two keys at the train station which
Pierce plans to procure and copy by night without knowing by the presence of
policemen. And Miriam, Pierces mistress who plays rather brief though important roles
in the execution of the train robbery such when she pretending Agar is her dead brother
and when she distracting Mr. Fowler while Pierce unlocks the cargo train.
The interesting part of the story is the robbery is indeed great, to ensure the
success of his bold plan, Pierce spends more than a year in preparation; his first steps
are fairly easy as he uses his wealth and social contacts to procure information on the
security measures and locations of the keys which are at the bank's executives Mr.
Henry Fowler and Mr. Edgar Trent each possess a key; the other two are locked in a
cabinet at the offices of the South Eastern Railway at the London Bridge train station.
Some year of preparation, with four different keys kept at three different places, 12 000
pounds in gold, train moving at the staggering speed of 50 miles per hour. I think it is
awesome, they plan the robbery well and both the ideas as good as the execution.
The confusing part of the story is how Edward Pierce can escape from the police
van after arrested because of the robbery, in the book it tells that Pierce was given the
keys of the handcuffs by Mirriam but I think how Mirriam could get the handcuff keys
and it is never told in the story.
The part that I dislike most is this book full of narrative and less of conversation
or dialogue between some characters. For me, I like the novel that there are many
conversations because it is more interesting rather just narrative which it seems boring
for me.

My thought and personal experience related to the book is as I read this book, I
want to know is this book based on the true event or not, then fortunately I found this
novel is a basically an account of an event that actually occurred in 1855 in EnglandFrance train which carried a shipment of gold. As I read about that fact, I found the
novel is almost the same of the actual event such in the fact event the robbery name are
Edward Agar and William Pierce who in the novel turned to Edward Pierce and Robert
Agar, the gold also locked in two heavy safes with total four keys similarly with the
story in the novel and many other similarly stories with the true events. The author put it
together by some excellent research work. I can only imagine the number of people he
had had to talk to, the amount of newspaper clippings he had had to go through to put
together this tale so wonderfully. This is an actual historic event, but the author uses
different character names and takes a few small liberties, to free him from the constraint
of making everything perfectly accurate. He makes up for it, however, by often
diverging into some incredible detail concerning the settings, the history, and the
customs of England in Queen Victoria era.
If I had a chance to change the story, I will more emphasize the story more on
the robbery because the story seems more emphasize on the describing how the
situations of Queen Victoria era in the 1850's when England was the reigning power in
the world and was the epicenter of urbanization with so many insight about the people,
life, social, etc.
Larger issues to deal with in the story is about how some man who wants to steal
some gold, and who enlists the help of certain skilled people to pull the whole thing off,
and with well-prepared plan to make the execution clean without known by the police.
The moral issue from the story is about the well-prepared planning will result
the best result too such when Edwards preparation which more than a years to collect
information also configure the robbery plan. But of course do not take the robbery stuff,
stealing or robbery is indeed wrong and break the law.