Congo by Michael Crichton

Here's a pretty good book which will never be optioned for the movies, despite the author's many other filmed novels. It reeks of unforgiveable political incorrectness.

The surface events involve a team of scientists exploring the Congo for diamonds. They're suddenly killed in a mysterious way, so the company launches another expedition.

The events are a pretty good, modern Africa adventure. Rough landscape and jungle, encounters with animals, river rapids, bad weather, they're racing a similar group from a rival company and so on.

Plus, Crichton had the smart idea of making a language using ape, a fictional versio of Koko, as a character. She goes along with the expedition and is one of the interesting parts of the book.

The final solution to the mystery is a let down, at least to me. I'm not sure I buy the basic thesis.

Below the surface, it's an interesting exploration of what it means to be humans. When apes can learn to talk and people eat each other (Crichton's portrait of tribal fighting in the Congo will certainly never be filmed!) and plan to fight war by computer, where is the line properly drawn?

Also, he hits upon his recurring theme of people doing things that have unexpected consequences. This was the backbone theme of JURASSIC PARK. Here, it buries the ruins of an ancient lost city under tons of volcanic lava.