There's a very measured obituary for Michael Crichton, who I'm sure you know has just passed away, in the New York Times. It hits all the points I would have made, about how he couldn't write relationships but he could sneak in lots of little lectures so that you came away a little brainier (except when his wild speculations got the better of him). Bizarrely, I think my favourite Crichton novel was the lesser-known Airframe simply because I learned so much about airplanes and their failings. I'm not sure if this NYTimes link will work or whether you'd have to register (which is free, but I'm sure you wouldn't want the hassle). It starts, thus:

"Michael Crichton, who died on Tuesday at the age of 66, was like a character in a Michael Crichton novel. He was unusually tall (6 feet 7 inches), strikingly handsome and encyclopedically well informed about everything from dinosaurs to medieval banquet halls to nanotechnology. As a writer he was a kind of cyborg, tirelessly turning out novels that were intricately engineered entertainment systems. No one - except possibly Mr. Crichton himself - ever confused them with great literature, but very few readers who started a Crichton novel ever put it down.