Edward Pierce from Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery was a man shrouded in mystery and unknown motives. Although he claimed that the reason he committed the robbery was because he purely “wanted the money,” the audience can be led to believe otherwise, as Pierce was a well-respected man of wealth (Crichton 279). Pierce did not want the fortune, only the fame that came with orchestrating the greatest crime of the nineteenth century. During the novel, Pierce bragged many times about his great abilities and seemingly limitless talents. While talking to his screwsman Robert Agar, the intellectual revealed the fact that he “climbed with [A. E. Coolidge] in Switzerland” (Crichton 199). Coolidge was a famous mountaineer and the mastermind