The book was a decent first novel. Crichton did an excellent job of writing a medical murder mystery but the story didn’t age well. You could tell this was written in a time when woman were undervalued, men ruled the roost and black people were just on the other side of the civil rights movement.
I did like how the story evolved and it did keep me guessing as to who killed Karen. I was dead set on one person in particular and finally had to admit defeat in the last 60 pages.

4/5
My first medical thriller! I loved it. Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors, so I knew I would like this book. It was interesting to see how the perspectives on abortion in the late 60s is similar to how some people view it now. The doctor-turned-detective premise was something I really enjoyed.

Pretty neat story. I wish we had more details about the girl who died but overall it was good.

A compelling thriller and super easy to read, apart from the main character being a grating sexist, racist piece of crap who had an internal monologue about the weight of every woman he met. Would be written differently today. Still good and worth reading I think. Impressive this was his debut.

Crichton.. The name is enough to make me read the book.. That's how much I like his works.. This one is his first.. Ohh..! The thrill I felt when I started reading the book..!! This is from where my favorite author began his journey..!!!
The plot was good,but I recognized the perpetrator as soon as that person was brought into the plot. So I can't say I felt the thrill till the end,but it was fun reading it. As usual,he is showing off his expertise but in no way does it stop a general reader from enjoying it. But I must say someone without basic knowledge of science might not be able to make head and tail out of it.
One thing I felt was that Crichton is making the protagonist take too much effort. The other characters doesn't seem to have much role. So the story seems a bit monotonous.
I wouldn't say the story is much enjoyable,like the usual Crichton. It feels boring at some places but it has the touch of Crichton which makes up for everything else.

One of the best muder-mystery books I've ever read. The medical description and detail in this book pulls you along with the all the twists and turns the plot make. A must read!

This was an interesting read, but not enthralling. The main character lacked depth and just wandered around finding clues everywhere. The clues were interesting, though, and they kept me reading to find out what would happen next. The ending was somewhat disappointing.

I'm spoiling this because it's garbage. Stop reading now if you want to read it.
Horrible. Okay, not terrible. It's Michael Crichton's first book, written circa 1967-69, prior to Roe v. Wade. It takes on illegal abortion.
Okay, I'm a biased reader. I'm ardently pro-life. But my dearly departed father-in-law practiced as an OB/GYN resident at Cook County, Chicago, pre Roe v. Wade. He made some of the same arguments these doctors make. And he lost young women to botched hangar abortions. So, I thought I would give it a try.
Holy misogyny. First of all, the docs performing the abortions talk about one patient with a first trimester rubella exposure to defend performing illegal abortions... And that's their case. Okay... That's one case that would certainly pull on one's convictions, right? Then every other abortion they talk about performing is on women who cheat on their husbands, take drugs, and OH THE HORROR, sleep with black men. THEN, the one doctor talks about how he isn't going to perform any more abortions on this one girl, because "she clearly wants to be a mother, she keeps getting pregnant". And he has no problem being the deciding factor if she deserves an abortion.
Uhhhhhhh. If there isn't anything wrong with abortion, why not let her have 50 of them? And if you perform them, why do you get to be the moral police?
Anyhoo, this gal dies in the first pages of the book from a botched abortion... Turns out she wasn't pregnant. Probably stopped menstruating and got FAT (5'4" AND SO PORKY AT 140 LBS) because of a pituitary tumor.
AND GUESS WHO KILLED HER? A nurse. They threw a nurse under the bus.
And the protagonist? You know why he HAD to get to the bottom of this? To get his friend out of jail. No one gave 2 $#!+$ about the dead girl. AND when he suspected another doctor, he didn't want to sully his good name. His friend? A known abortionist. He didn't care who really killed her. Just wanted his friend off. Oh. And he was complicit with the illegal abortions in their hospital. (deep sigh. Accompanied by eye roll)
Even if you are so absolutely pro-choice that you can hardly stand to read my stuff, you would hate this book. I kept reading out of twisted curiosity.
You're welcome. I took one for the team.

Reread: the first novel by Michael Crichton, who is best known for Jurassic Park the movie (which was way, way inferior to JP the book) and ER, the ur-mother of today's TV show boom. A young girl dies in EW (=ER) from loss of blood, seemingly from a botched abortion (the setting seems to be mid-1960s Boston, and abortion is illegal — this is a world before Roe v. Wade (1973), and, certainly, a book that was one of the paving blocks toward it. The victim allegedly named Dr. Art Lee, who is American Chinese, as the abortionist. The situation is complicated by the fact that the girl, Karen Randall, comes from a prominent medical family: her father, her uncle, her brother are all reputable doctors. Dr. Lee is arrested and held in a police cell. The details of the case do not sit well with the narrator, Dr. John Berry, a friend of Lee's and a pathologist. The most delightful feature of this medical thriller is the constant underflow of medical information (the novel was actually one of the reasons for Crichton to ditch the medical profession and go into writing full time). It's not a great detective story — it is extremely hard to write one, harder than a thriller; but it's a decent thriller. It is also very instructive as regards the speed of change: apart from the abortion issue at the core of the story, black characters are exotic (and their exoticism is commented upon) and called Negroes. Same about Chinese, actually (and shortly before that, the Irish were in the same position).

Weirdly fascinating to read a novel centered on abortion written pre Roe v Wade… especially from a medical viewpoint and especially now with recent politics. But with all that said it is early Michael Chrichton so always a good mystery to be solved.

Crichton was an incredibly compelling and thoughtful writer. Throughout the book, I was turning the page as fast as I could to see what's next, even if my sisters were teasing me as I read because the subject matter left me frequently grimacing.

A Case of Need is actually an early Michael Crichton book and occurs in the prior to the legalization of abortion. The book is a medical mystery involving an abortion gone terribly wrong resulting in the death of the woman. Arthur Lee, a well known OBGYN is immediately accused and arrested. The problem is that the woman was not pregnant and a medical doctor would know better than to perform the procedure without testing. A colleague, upon discovery of this information, decides to pursue the case, both to find the guilty and to protect himself. The result is an interesting and engaging search for the real perpetrator and a moral exploration of the reasons good doctors did this procedure before legalization.