Crais, Robert

Chasing Darkness: An Elvis Cole Novel (Elvis Cole)

Elvis Cole is Back--In a Desperate Fight to Clear his Name...

It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women -- one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole's world upside down.

Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero.

But the discovery of the death album in Byrd's lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims -- two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can't help but wonder -- did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives?

Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death -- a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be.

Chasing Darkness is a blistering thriller from the bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime writing.

The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel (Joe Pike Novels)

Joe Pike -- the ex-cop, ex-Marine, exmercenary from Robert Crais's superb PI Elvis Cole novels -- headlines the explosive action of this page-turning New York Times bestseller.

A wild-living young heiress slams into trouble in the L.A. night -- the kind of trouble even her money can't shut down. After her Aston Martin collides with a mysterious car, Larkin Conner Barkley attempts to help the accident victims -- and becomes the sole witness in a federal investigation. Whisking her out of her Beverly Hills world is Joe Pike, hired to shield Larkin Barkley from a relentless team of killers. But when a chain of lies and betrayals tightens around them, Pike drops off the grid and follows his own rules for survival: strike fast, hit hard, hunt down the hunters....

The Monkey's Raincoat

When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole's Disney-Deco office, she's lost something very valuable - her husband and her young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn't thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower Joe Pike.

Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood's studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs and sex - and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it's also turned ugly. Because everybody, from cops to starlets to crooks, has declared war on Ellen and Elvis

L.A. Requiem (Elvis Cole Novels)

Robert Crais (Free Fall, Monkey's Raincoat) returns with his eighth Elvis Cole mystery, L.A. Requiem, a breakneck caper that leaves the wise-cracking detective second-guessing himself. Cole's partner, the tight-lipped, charm-free Joe Pike, gets a call from his friend Frank "Tortilla" Garcia. Not only is Garcia a wealthy businessman, he's a political heavyweight and father of Karen, Joe's ex. Frank sends the gumshoe duo out to find his girl, but the boys are beaten to the punch by the men in blue: Karen is found in a park with a bullet in her brain. The two stay on the case, but when another murder points to Pike as a suspect, things take a turn for the worse. The boys on the force are all too willing to put Pike away--he has a checkered past. When Cole attempts to save Pike, he finds a lot more than he bargained for.

Crais's knack for snappy dialogue and clean-cut scenes bespeak his former days as a writer for the award-winning Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law: "Krantz's mouth split into a reptilian smile, and I wondered what was playing out here. He said, 'I want this man questioned, Lieutenant. If Pike here knows the vic, maybe he knows how she got like this." Pike said, 'It won't happen, pants.' Krantz's face went deep red, and an ugly web of veins pulsed in his forehead. I moved close to Pike. 'Is there something happening here that I should know about?'"

The day starts like any other in L.A. The sun burns hot as the Santa Ana winds blow ash from mountain fires to coat the glittering city. But for private investigator Joe Pike, the city will never be the same again. His ex-lover, Karen Garcia, is dead, brutally murdered with a gun shot to the head.

Now Karen's powerful father calls on Pike (a former cop) and his partner, Elvis Cole, to keep an eye on the LAPD as they search for his daughter's killer--because in the luminous City of Angels, everyone has secrets, and even the mighty blue have something to hide. But what starts as a little procedural hand-holding turns into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. For a dark web of conspiracy threatens to destroy Pike and Cole's twelve-year friendship--if not their lives. And L.A. just might be singing their dirge.

Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel

Readers who complain that there's too much wisecracking and cute icon worship in Robert Crais's books about Los Angeles private eye Elvis Cole will be glad to find these traits downplayed (but not totally disappeared) in this story about Cole's search for a missing printer whose specialty is funny money. The book is centered by the presence of the printer's three children--especially the motherly 15-year-old Teri and the obnoxious 12-year-old Charles--who hire Elvis from the phone book. Cole, hoping to become the stepfather of the son of his own lady love, gets sucked in by the children's combination of need and family unity, and soon finds himself in the middle of a shooting war between Russian gangsters, Vietnamese patriots, and ambiguous Federal agents. Previous Elvis outings in paperback: Sunset Express, Free Fall, Lullaby Town, The Monkey's Raincoat, Stalking the Angel, Voodoo River.

Life in the California sun suits Elvis Cole—until the day a fifteen-year-old girl and her two younger siblings walk into his office. Then everything changes.

Three years ago, a Seattle family ran for their lives in a hail of bullets. Hired by three kids to find their missing father, Elvis now must pick up the cold pieces of a drama that began that night. What he finds is a sordid tale of high crimes and illicit drugs. As clues to a man’s secret life emerge from the shadows, Elvis knows he’s not just up against ruthless mobsters and some very angry Feds. He’s facing a storm of desperation and conspiracy—bearing down on three children whose only crime was their survival. . . .

The Forgotten Man (Elvis Cole Novels)

Elvis Cole is back...

With his acclaimed bestsellers, Hostage (a New York Times Notable Book) and Demolition Angel, Robert Crais drew raves for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations, and cinematic prose. Now, in The Last Detective, Crais returns to his signature character, Los Angeles private investigator Elvis Cole, in a masterful page-turner that probes the meaning of family and the burdens of the past.

Elvis Cole's relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained. When she moved from Louisiana to join Elvis in Los Angeles, she never dreamed that violence would so easily touch her life -- but then the unthinkable happens. While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, Ben disappears without a trace. Desperate to believe that the boy has run away, evidence soon mounts to suggest a much darker scenario.

Joining forces with his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, Elvis frantically searches for Ben with the help of LAPD Detective Carol Starkey, as Lucy's wealthy, oil-industry ex-husband attempts to wrest control of the investigation. Amid the maelstrom of personal conflicts, Elvis and Joe are forced to consider a more troubling lead -- one indicating that Ben's disappearance is connected to a terrible, long-held secret from Elvis Cole's past.

Venturing deep inside a complex psyche, Crais explores Elvis's need for family - the military that embraced him during a troubled adolescence, his rock-solid partnership with Pike, and his floundering relationship with Lucy - as they race the clock in their search for Ben. The Last Detective is Robert Crais' richest, most intense tale of suspense yet.


From the Hardcover edition.

In his major New York Times bestseller, THE LAST DETECTIVE, Robert Crais returned to his signature characters, private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike. Now Crais delivers a stunning, edge-of-your-seat suspense novel that leads Elvis to the very thing he’s always searched for—the dark secrets of his own life…as well as a brutal killer determined to stop him.

Los Angeles, 3:58 a.m.: Elvis Cole receives the phone call he’s been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is dead.

Haunted throughout his life by a lack of knowledge about his father, Elvis turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past— his longtime partner and confidant, Joe Pike. Together with hard-edged LAPD detective, Carol Starkey, they launch a feverish search for the dead man’s identity—even as Elvis struggles between wanting to believe he’s found his father at last and allowing his suspicions to hold him back. With each long-buried clue they unearth, a frightening picture begins to emerge about who the dead man might have been and the terrible secret he’s been guarding.

At the same time, Elvis has no way of knowing he has awakened a sleeping monster. The further he goes in his investigation, the closer he draws to a merciless killer who is violently connected to the unidentified man’s past. This psychopath believes Cole is hunting him, and he goes on the attack to find Elvis before Elvis can find him.

Summoning all the powerful elements that have made Robert Crais one of the preeminent crime writers today, THE FORGOTTEN MAN is a spectacular tour-de-force of suspense and intrigue.

Lullaby Town : An Elvis Cole Novel

Hollywood's newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelson, the brilliant, erratic director known as the King of Adventure.  His films make billions, but his manners make enemies.  What the boy king wants, he gets, and what Nelson wants is for Elvis to comb the country for the airhead wife and infant child the film-school flunkout dumped en route to becoming the third biggest filmmaker in America.  It's the kind of case Cole can handle in his sleep -- until it turns out to be a nightmare.  For when Cole finds Nelson's wife in a small Conneticut town, she's nothing like what he expects.  The lady has some unwanted -- and very nasty -- mob connections, which means Elvis could be opening the East Coast branch of his P.I. office . . .at the bottom of the Hudson River.

Stalking the Angel

Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable, something that belonged to someone else: a rare thirteenth-century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure.

Everything PI Elvis Cole knew about Japanese culture he'd learned from reading Shogun, but he knew a lot of crooks - and what he didn't know, his sociopathic sidekick Joe Pike did. Together their search begins in LA's Little Tokyo and the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the yakuza, and leads to a white-knuckled adventure filled with madness, murder and sexual obsession - just another day's work for Elvis Cole.

Free Fall

Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies. Her fiance, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer is sure he's in trouble - the kind of serious trouble that only Cole can get him out of.

Five minutes after his new client leaves the office, Cole and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike, are hip-deep in a deadly situation as they plummet into a world of South Central gangs, corrupt cops and conspiracies of silence. And before long, every cop in the LAPD is gunning for a pair of armed and dangerous killers - Cole and Pike.

Demolition Angel

Penzler Pick, May 2000: Like many authors with ongoing characters, Robert Crais has taken a break from his famous private eye. After eight novels featuring Elvis Cole and his loyal sidekick Joe Pike, Crais has created Carol Starkey, a bomb squad veteran now doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section. Three years have passed since the detonation that killed Carol's partner and lover, but she is still severely scarred both mentally and physically. She can't bear to look in the mirror, and she hasn't been with another man since David Boudreaux left her bed that last morning he went to work. She gets through the day with the help of Tagamet and alcohol.

When a bomb call takes the life of another colleague, Carol begins to investigate a series of explosions that seem to be designed to exterminate bomb technicians. She soon realizes that she's "the one that got away." With the help of an FBI agent whom she loathes professionally for interfering with her job but finds attractive anyway, Carol must track down one of the most frighteningly brilliant killers of the modern age.

This edgy thriller's protagonist is one that the reader at first may have difficulty liking, but she's got a background and history that make her truly three-dimensional. One hopes that Crais, one of the handful of young crime writers capable of writing consistently luminous prose, will continue to give us characters like Carol Starkey to star in his always powerful portraits of modern-day Los Angeles. --Otto Penzler

“TERRIFIC . . . EXPLOSIVE . . . [A] HIGH POWERED THRILL RIDE.”
–The Wall Street Journal

“CRAIS IS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME, and Demolition Angel delivers the goods. With a bang. . . . It’s Silence of the Lambs meets Speed as down-on-her-luck former bomb-squad ace Carol Starkey plays cat-and-mouse with a serial bomber. . . . Crais knows how to press all the right buttons in keeping the story line taut and the action, well, explosive.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“GRIPPING . . . CRAIS PILES ON PLOT TWISTS . . . gathering the separate threads at the end and igniting them like a string of fireworks.”
–People

“A POWERFUL, SELF-CONTAINED NOVEL OF SUSPENSE that has the compactness, velocity, and effectiveness of a well-aimed bullet . . . This is a thriller that works on every level, a pivotal work from a crime novelist operating at the top of his game.”
–Los Angeles Times

“FASCINATING AND FRIGHTENINGLY BELIEVABLE . . . Starkey is one of the toughest characters to grace the crowded field of thriller books in a long time.”
–USA Today