Tag: Reread Project

Reread Project: Voodoo River by Robert Crais

On September 9, 2014

In Authors, Blog Series, Elvis Cole/Joe Pike, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Reread Project, Robert Crais

36 hours behind schedule. For anyone tracking, I’m sorry and I’ll try to do better.

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Voodoo River

by Robert Crais
Series: Elvis Cole, #5

Mass Market Paperback, 416 pages
Published April 1st 1996 by Hyperion
Read: September 3 – 4, 2014

Many people see L. A. Requiem as the apex of the Cole series. For my money, Voodoo River is the apex of the series that began in The Monkey’s Raincoat — he’s thoughtful, more meditative, yet still jokey. There’s a greater sense of place than in most of the earlier books. Elvis is vulnerable, yet just as competent and confident as he’s been the whole time we’ve known him. I’ll explain my thinking here and different take on Requiem in a few weeks when we get to it.

Once again, we open with a great description of his new client:

“Excuse us, but are you Jodi Taylor?”
In the space of a breath Jodi Taylor put away the things that troubled her and smiled the smile that thirty million Americans saw every week. It was worth seeing. Jodi Taylor was thirty-six years old, and beautiful in the way that only women with a measure of maturity can be beautiful. Not like in a fashion magazine. Not like a model. There was a quality of realness about her that let you feel that you might meet her in a supermarket or in church or at the PTA. She had hazel eyes and dark skin and one front tooth slightly overlapped the other. When she gave you the smile her heart smiled, too, and you felt it was genuine. Maybe it was that quality that was making her a star.
. . .
Jodi smiled wider, and if you had never before met or seen her, in that moment you would fall in love.

When we meet her, Jodi Taylor is the star of one of the biggest shows on television, but thirty-six years ago when no one cared who she was, she was an orphan — given up for adoption by her mother. She was raised by a loving couple who she considers her parents — she’s not on a search for her roots, her “real” mother or anything like that. But she’s curious about her medical history, worried about what genetic time-bombs might be ticking away inside her. So she hires Elvis — on the recommendation of Peter Alan Nelson — to go to Louisiana and work with an attorney specializing in adoption to find her birth parents and get this information.

Despite the strictness of the adoption laws in the Pelican State, it seems like a pretty straight-forward case, and after arriving in Baton Rouge, sampling some local cuisine, and consulting with the attorney, Lucy Chenier, Elvis gets to work and it doesn’t take long for him to make some solid progress.

Here’s where complications set in: someone starts trailing Elvis as he investigates, this person seems to have some sort of criminal ties, and the biggest complication of all: Lucy Chenier. Elvis is smitten with her. Almost immediately, and more and more so in every conversation afterwards. This isn’t some sort of passing fancy, as was the case with Janet Simon; or the creepy, drunken attraction for Jennifer Sheridan; or whatever he had going with his office neighbor, Cindy. Elvis falls for this woman, hard. That’s clear for the reader straightaway, the only question is what impact that’ll have on Elvis, his current investigation, and maybe his future. Elvis even has the beginning of a relationship with her son, Ben.

As for the guy following him? He’s not that good at it, and he’s even worse at picking up a tail. Elvis is able to exploit his deficient skills and learn a few things that get him closer to finding Jodi’s mother. And that’s when things get really nasty — Elvis finds himself in the middle of a decades’ old crime, a murder investigation and caught between three criminal organizations. Given that, naturally, Joe finds himself in Louisiana, too.

So the first of the criminal enterprises is a local group — run by a good ol’ boy-type. Milt Rossier isn’t going to catch the attention of anyone i New York, Miami or even New Orleans. But in his small pond, he is one huge fish. He does a little bit of everything, has some very loyal employees (including a scary George and Lenny like pair) and an old, huge and vicious turtle named Luther. Luther is described as “a snapping turtle that had to be three feet across and weigh almost two hundred pounds. It was dark and primordial with a shell like tank armor and a great horned head and a monstrous beak.” Gives me the heebie-jeebies just to read about him. Milt reminded me of Domingo Garcia Duran from The Monkey’s Raincoat, using toreo to intimidate and threaten Elvis. However, Duran only served to anger Elvis, make him more determined. Milt and Luther? They brought out something we’d not yet seen in Elvis — we’ve sen him angry, we’ve seen him morose, we’ve seen him lost, but after his session with Luther? He’s shaken, he’s frightened to his core. I don’t know if it’s Milt, the reaction of the others there, or just Elvis’ reaction to the reptilian Luther versus the human threat of Duran — but it’s something deeper we see here.

Another one of the groups that Elvis tangles with is headed by Frank Escobar. Escobar’s a criminal mastermind who looks nothing like what you’d expect (which likely means he’s more realistic than the rest), he’s this friendly middle-aged guy with a hospitable wife and kid. Just hanging out having gin and tonics next to the pool, the kind f guy you want as a neighbor. Until he gets angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. He’s the kind of crook that I’d love to read more about.

As far as the third? Well, we don’t get to know them too much — it’s basically Escobar’s group, but larger and with a head who’s not so cuddly.

You put Elvis in the middle of all that while trying to sort out one family’s problems — past and present? Well, it’ll take he and Joe at the top of their game. Hopefully Elvis can get his head cleared enough, but at least we don’t have to worry about Joe — I’m not sure that Joe has anything but the top of his game.

Elvis’ jokes are there, but they’re subdued. Elvis has found himself in the middle of some really nasty stuff — the adoption as well as the criminal activity he stumbled into — and it’s hard to joke his way through it, but he does as often as possible. Still, there is room for him to be something other than just the crime-fighter. As long as Lucy Chenier’s around, Elvis will make time.

When they first meet, Elvis asks her out — and is turned down, after all, they work together. He keeps after her, and while I’m not saying he wore her down, she eventually takes him to dinner at a local restaurant. What follows is possibly the funniest thing in the series so far as Elvis tries to 1. be charming, 2. not get drunk and 3. keep things cool with Lucy. But he does something right, probably later, because they have another dinner or two together, and well, a lot more.

Later, when things are going better, Elvis will spend time with Lucy and Ben at home enjoying a quiet evening hanging out and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation:

It was the one where you follow the android, Data, through a twenty-four-hour period in his life, most of which is spent attempting to comprehend the vagaries of the humans around him. The fun comes in watching the logical, emotionless Data try to make sense of the human condition, which is akin to trying to make sense of the senseless. He never quite gets it, but he always keeps trying, writing endless programs for his android brain, trying to make the calculus of human behavior add up. When you think about it, that is not so different from what I do.

Yeah, it’s a little heavy-handed, but I liked it.

Of course, Joe and Lucy met. And it’s fun to read.

“It was a pleasure, Joe. You’re an interesting man.”
Pike said, “Yes.”
Lucy gave me a kiss, then let herself out and went into her building. I twisted around in the seat and looked at Joe. “She says you’re interesting and you say yes?”
Pike got out of the back and into the front. “Did you want me to lie?”

We see something new happen to Pike here. But — see that one for yourself. It’s refreshing (like in Lullaby Town) to see Pike interact with the police without pushback or resentment (or something worse). There’s plenty of opportunity for Elvis’ warrior friend to do what he does best. There’s even some opportunities for Elvis and Joe to just hang out, work out together, and talk. They get to interact as friends a little, not just partners. We need to see more of this. At one point, we get what’s possibly Pike’s biggest speech since the one he gave Ellen Lang in Monkey and just as on point. He really helps Elvis keep his head when he disappoints Jodi. Lots of warm fuzzies are to be had there.

There’s some interesting things said here about honor (not in the way that Parker does, it’s under the dialogue and narration, almost never the subject of it), conscience, and duty. Really, there’s a straight line from Elvis assuring Ellen Lang that he’d help her, through tearing up her father’s check and hunting down Mimi Warren, through doing all he could to help Karen Lloyd, to Jennifer Sheridan to Jodi and her family. It’s the same impulse driving Elvis (and therefore Joe). This impulse, this drive is what unites Elvis and Joe to the hard-boiled PI legacy, but their application of it is what helps distinguish them from others. As I recall, there’s a change in the wings for how Elvis approaches things, making this the apex of Stage I of the Cole series, if not the whole.

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5 Stars

Reread Project: Free Fall by Robert Crais

By HCNewton

On September 1, 2014

In Authors, Blog Series, Elvis Cole/Joe Pike, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Reread Project, Robert Crais

I said I’d get this posted on Monday, not when on Monday. It’s amazing what a cold, a tweaked work schedule and a National Holiday can do to one’s writing schedule. Still, the way the last few days have gone to be only 12 hours late is pretty good.

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Free Fall

by Robert Crais
Series: Elvis Cole, #4

Mass Market Paperback, 288 pg.
Bantam Book, 1994
Read: August 27, 2014

I’m sure others have said this, but after writing a character suspected of being a dirty cop (at the beginning of the novel — not saying what’s decided by the end) named Mark Thurman, what was Robert Crais’ reaction to Mark Fuhrman hitting the news a couple years later? You know no one at Bantam would’ve let him use that name if the timeline was a little different.

What’s this about a dirty cop? Sure, I should get to that — Elvis’ client this time is a damsel-adjacent-to-distress. Jennifer Sheridan is convinced something is wrong with her fiancé/childhood sweetheart. He’s a police officer attached to some special squad and she’s afraid that he’s being forced into doing something criminal (she’s also afraid that he’s not being forced at all, but she doesn’t admit that), and wants Elvis to get him out of the jam. She can’t afford to hire him, but she has a payment plan in mind. Elvis being Elvis (and not Joe Pike), he takes the case.

In so many hard-boiled P. I. novels, the initial meeting — the initial sighting — with the client is vital, and authors pour some of their best descriptive powers into that. Go read the first chapter or two of The Big Sleep, God Save the Child or The Judas Goat to confirm that, if you must (first three I thought of, I could be here all day if I tried to make this exhaustive). Crais puts more effort getting Chapter 1 of this book right than he does the rest of it (at least it seems that way to me, I don’t know, how do you measure creative effort anyhow?) — he makes sure the hook is set, and set thoroughly.

Jennifer Sheridan had sounded young on the phone, but in person she looked younger, with a fresh-scrubbed face and clear healthy skin and dark auburn hair. Pretty. The kind of happy, innocent pretty that starts deep inside, and doesn’t stop on the way out. That kind of pretty. She was wearing a light blue cotton skirt whit a white blouse and a matching light blue bolero jacket and low-heeled navy pumps. The clothes were neat and fit well, and the cuts were stylish but not expensive. She would have to shop and she would have to look for bargains, but she had found them. I liked that. She carried a black imitation leather purse the size of a Buick, and when she sat, she sat with her knees and her feet together, and her hands clutching the purse on her lap. Proper. I liked that, too. I made her for twenty-three but she looked eighteen and she’d still be carded in bars when she was thirty.”

In one paragraph, you know exactly how she looks, you know her personality, her financial state, have an idea of her background, and the kind of job she has. We like this girl, we want Elvis to help her already. And not in a Dan Brown-ish, reading off a résumé kind of way, either. But in a way youwant to keep reading. “The kind of happy, innocent pretty that starts deep inside, and doesn’t stop on the way out. That kind of pretty.” Some authors would be happy to call it a career if they pulled off that line. A page later we read:

She glanced into the big purse as if there were something inside it that she was hoping she wouldn’t have to show me, as if the purse were somehow a point of no return, and if she opened it and let out whatever was inside, she would never be able to close it again or return the elements of her life to a comfortable or familiar order. Pandora’s Purse. Maybe if I had a purse like that, I’d be careful of it, too.

Here, over one page we know this client, how bad her situation is, and what’s at stake for her — sure, not the details, but no need to sweat those. If the rest of the book matched this chapter, we’d be in for a real treat.

It’s not as vital — but this is the first time that Elvis has met a prospective client alone. It sets up a different dynamic from the get go. Also, we don’t get the “I’m not doing this for you, but for him/her” thing. It’s a book of firsts, folks. Well, we don’t get it in the first chapter, anyway.

Immediately, her fiancé, Marc Thurman and his drunk partner Floyd Riggens come into his office to strong-arm him away from taking the case, feeding him what’s clearly a line. This doesn’t deter Elvis, but it does give him plenty to think about.

His investigation gives some quick answers, which seem to satisfy him, but not his client. After he tries to tell her she’s wrong about her suspicious, she convinces him to carry on. Neither feel very good about the way that meeting went.

I gave Jennifer Sheridan a lift the three blocks back to her office and then I headed back toward mine, but I wasn’t particularly happy about it. I felt the way you feel after you’ve given money to a panhandler because the panhandler has just dealt you a sob story that both of you knew was a lie but you went for it anyway. I frowned a lot and stared down a guy driving an ice cream truck just so I could feel tough. If a dog had run out in front of me I probably would’ve swerved to hit it. Well, maybe not. There’s just so much sulking you can do.

(I just really liked that paragraph) So Elvis carries on, and soon uncovers some criminal activity (which is why it’s not a 50 page book) — though there’s some question about how involved Thurman is. As he peels back layer after layer, things look worse and worse. It doesn’t take long until Elvis gets a look at what can go wrong in an organization like the LAPD, even as it tries to recover from the Rodney King incident and the ensuing riots.

The problem with this one for me is this Giant Criminal Act (henceforth: GCA) that Joe and Elvis perpetrate. It’s difficult to discuss without spoiling anything. And yes, I see where it looked like they had no choice, and how the rest of the novel is really only possible resulting from it. But we’re not talking about something like Elvis committing a little B&E to snoop for clues, or like when they invade a mobster’s home to rescue a kidnap victim and kill some criminals. Tropes of the genre, and to one extent or another, justifiable. This is a clear-cut felony, no ifs, ands or buts about it. I have trouble with that. Their decision to commit the GCA was too quick and too casual. Five words of dialogue. Five. That’s it. And then to actually perpetrate the GCA? Piece of cake. Elvis has had harder times getting a sandwich from the deli below his office. Speaking of easy — having committed the crime, it’s super-easy to evade the police afterwards. And it’s a big enough happening that there should’ve been plenty of media coverage to make it difficult for the two of them to do anything. Yet, the next 80 pages go by without any real difficulty at all for them (at least from the GCA). Other than a little tension between Elvis and Poitras for a minute, there’s no fall-out, either. From conception to carrying out to fall out, it’s all too easy. And it shouldn’t be. Not in the world that Crais has made — there should be consequences.

Still, if you swallow that pill, suspend enough disbelief, or just delay thinking about it — what follows is rocking good ride. Lots of action, some good characters, Elvis’ own reminder about how different L.A. can be depending on the color of your skin and what part of town that you’re in. Between the GCA and the final shoot-out, this one felt more like a pretty good action movie than a decent P. I. novel — the kind that Peter Alan Nelson would direct. That’s not necessarily a knock, but it’s sure not a compliment.

I’m also troubled at the initial confrontation between Elvis and Thurman & Riggens. If that had been pushed back just a little, until Elvis had started the investigation, even by just a couple of hours, it would’ve worked better. Instead, while her recently vacated seat is still warm, they come in hot. I had a hard time buying it — it’s too much, too fast. It felt like Crais was trying to raise the tension prematurely. Sure, it can be a sign that Thurman and Riggens are stressed-out cops on the verge of a breakdown and are therefore acting stupidly and recklessly. But in the moment, it just seems misplayed. Let Elvis make a call or two, ask a question of someone. Let him actually do something before you react.

Quick continuity check-in: Eddie Ditko, Elvis’ friend from the newspaper is back, and is good for some background on Thurman and his team. Lou Poitras gets consulted a bit early on, and along with giving Elvis a nudge in the right direction, reminds him that he owes him some money. I love that when Lou Poitras reminds Elvis that he owes him money, it’s always for a paltry sum — $5, $12. Elvis is quite the high roller. Cindy, who we almost met in the last book is briefly mentioned, Elvis is going to have to introduce us to her soon if he’s going to keep talking about her. Lastly, Ellen Lang gets name-dropped, and is good for some insight into Joe Pike.

Speaking of Joe Pike — I really haven’t talked about his contribution to this novel. As it involved LAPD officers, you know it’s going to get interesting once he gets involved. Turns out, that Joe rode for awhile with Thurman’s squad leader, and his reaction doesn’t seem to be the insta-hatred that everyone else on the force feels for Joe. But there’s a lot of interaction with the LAPD beyond the REACT team later on — and everyone is ready to express their disdain for Pike. Still, not really given any answers why. Until this trip through the series, I didn’t notice a. how often this was brought up, and b. how much Crais strings us along before giving us answers. Reading it in such a compressed time really helps.

The strenghts of this are in the — the not-as-nice corners of L. A., in the shadow of the riots — there’s bleakness, despair, and some sort of hope. Mostly, the strength of the book comes from some of the characters we meet for the first time: Rusty Swetaggen, Elvis’ former client, seems like a nice guy, a good reminder that sometimes Elvis has cases that don’t end in gunfights. Ida Leigh Washington, a mother of a murdered son that we meet early on, she’s got some strong character and backbone. Her other son, James Edward, is a nice, kid who’s trying to do something with his life post-Navy, it’s a shame he has to come back to this part of L. A. But at least, he gets to reconnect with Ray Depente, an ex-Marine, who works with little kids, people who get tangled up in gangs that shouldn’t, and pays the bills by teaching action stars how to throw a punch (no idea if he knows Nelson or not). I’d read a book or two about Depente.

Lastly, does anyone know if Depente is based on a real person? If so, it’d be really interesting to read more about him. Same goes for Rollie George from Lullaby Town. Both feel like they just might be based on someone in the real world.

In the end the GCA ruins my appreciation for this one. I get Crais’ thinking on that one. I think I do, anyway. But its minuses far outweigh the pluses. There are interesting moments in this book, some fun things. But if not for the GCA, it’d be roughly on the level of Stalking the Angel for me. Good character moments, decent enough plot, good action, intriguing twist on what’s expected from the initial conversation with the client, etc. But oh, well. Everyone deserves an “off” day/book. And — Voodoo River‘s next, starting off a run of my three favorites in the series (at least I recall that being the case, we’ll see how good my memory is).

What about you? Did you mind the GCA (spoil away in the comments section — at least spoil this book)? Am I being too hard on this entry?

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3 Stars

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Drawing by Kirsty Stewart, chameleonkirsty on deviantART, used with permission.

Reread Project: Lullaby Town by Robert Crais

By HCNewton

On August 25, 2014

In Blog Series, Elvis Cole/Joe Pike, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Reread Project, Robert Crais

Lullaby Town

by Robert Crais
Series: Elvis Cole, #3

Mass Market Paperback, 352 pg.
Bantam, 1993
Read: August 21, 2014

The third book in the Elvis Cole series is about sixty pages longer than the previous — and it was about sixty pages longer than the first. This isn’t a trend that will continue, I say with some relief (in fact, I believe the next will be shorter). But the growth isn’t just in page count; it’s in depth of story, depth of character, and the way Crais deals with making sure neither plot nor character get short-shrifted in this.

There’s an obvious effort here to establish a series continuity here with The Monkey’s Raincoat. We get the return of Pat Kyle and her laugh — and that would be enough to help establish this book’s place in the Cole-verse, but we get more. As he spends time sticking out like a sore thumb in a small town, he reminisces about the first time he visited Watts with Cleon Tyner and felt the same way. We also see (and get a reference to) Ellen Lang, briefly. She’s doing much better than she was when we saw her last. In Stalking the Angel, Elvis makes reference to keeping in touch with a couple of former clients, and with Ellen’s appearance we see him doing that again. Unlike with the clients in Stalking, she wasn’t there as a plot device, she was just there to let series readers know that she was still around. I really appreciate little touches like that.

If one’s an incident, two’s a coincidence, and three’s a pattern, we have ourselves a legitimate pattern established. For the third book in a row, Elvis is approached by a potential client/representative of a potential client who is difficult or obnoxious. Elvis will say that he’s not taking the case for the difficult client/client representative, but he will for the likable/put-upon representative/client. I can see why Crais uses this — Elvis gets to show some independence, some graciousness to the non-obnoxious person, and even a little wit in the way he phrases it. But, it’s getting to be lazy returning to this so often. Then again, if I wasn’t reading these so close to each other, I probably wouldn’t have noticed this pattern. So who am I to say?

So here’s the setup: Peter Alan Nelson, the 3^rd biggest director in the world (mostly action flicks, apparently — a proto-Michael Bay, but one who’s not as Bay-ish, let’s hope) dumped his wife and kid just before he made it big. It’s been ten years and he’s feeling bad about that now, and wants to get to know his son. So the studio hires Elvis to find them. He does so, she’s living on the other side of the country, appears to have actually done okay for herself, the boy seems good — really, the last thing they need is a brash, self-obsessed, Hollywood type to interrupt their lives. But that’s what Elvis was paid to help with — but first he wants to check into something odd about Nelson’s ex. Turns out, she’s under the thumb of the capo di tutti capi. So before Elvis unleashes Hurricane Peter into their lives, he and Joe Pike will have to see about removing that thumb.

The tension is high, the solution isn’t obvious — and isn’t easy to achieve, either. Elvis does a pretty neat job investigating things to find Heather Lloyd in the first place and he has to do plenty more to figure out how to extricate her from this situation. There’s a good deal of sleuthing in this book, which really makes up for last time. Teach me to be snarky about that. Sure, they’ve got the ex-cop with all the connections and some power, Rollie George, to act as a font of all knowledge and help them navigate a city they aren’t familiar with. But that really doesn’t come across as a cheat — Elvis still has to act on the info given and turn it into something. Rollie cuts out a lot of time, but he doesn’t hand him anything wrapped in a bow. Having someone be a source of local information can really help keep things moving plot-wise.

This time out, the Peter Pan quest, protection of innocence — whatever you want to call it — is very brief and understated. If anything we see the dangers of that kind of life — Peter Alan Nelson could arguably be considered an eternal youth, with expensive toys to play with — but his demeanor, self-centeredness and lack of ethical code make him a very different kind of child than Elvis. If you’re going to hold on yo your childhood, do it the right way, or you end up as a petulant slob. There’s a child-like way of approaching things, and a childish manner. Cole’s not interested in the latter one bit. It’s interesting to watch Elvis draw the distinctions, or at least act on distinctions that he’s drawn, so that we can see what they are. You also have to wonder, seeing Peter Alan Nelson throw a fit, if Cole seeks to shed a bit of his version of Peter Pan so that he won’t act like “that guy.”

Lullaby Town has moments of humor throughout, but like Stalking, it’s not as jokey as Monkey’s was. The wit is there, he just doesn’t feel the need to break it out as often. Or when he does (and he’s not just provoking annoying clients or self-important mafia persons), there’s a purpose, to illustrate something, to reveal something — or to break monotony. Either way, Crais is learning how to let situations drive this kind of thing.

Portrait of the Big City Detective sitting on a small-town bench, ferreting. In the cold. People passed on the sidewalk, and when they did they nodded and smiled and said hello. I said hello back to them. They didn’t look as cold as me, but perhaps that was my imagination. You get used to the weather where you live. When I was in Ranger School in the Army, they sent us to northern Canada to learn to ski and to climb ice and to live in the snow with very few clothes. We got used to it. Then they sent us to Vietnam. That’s the Army.

Our knowledge of Elvis isn’t enhanced a lot by this novel, but what we do get is important. On the not-so-important side, we get a definitive note from him about giggling – he doesn’t like it (which maybe was hinted at before, but his displeasure wasn’t as explicit). We do get confirmation of a good deal here, his character, his willingness to help those who need it, but can’t afford him — that sort of thing. He gives Karen a concise explanation for why he decided to help her rather than turn things over to the police.

“And you haven’t told the police?”
“No.”
“But those men beat you up.”
I said, “I knew something was wrong and I wanted to find out what it was. Cops deal with the law. The law isn’t usually concerned with right and wrong. Ofttimes, there are very large differences.”
She shook her head as if I’d spoken Esperanto.

Elvis is solidified here as your hard-boiled hero. It’s not about legal/illegal, it’s about right and wrong — an objective morality. This is the core of Elvis Cole, and even Joe Pike — why do they do what they do? From tearing up Ellen Lang’s check, to carrying on the search for Mimi Warren after being fired, to putting themselves out on the limb for a client they were only hired to find (and who can’t pay them anything). This is it.

As the action in this one takes place no where near the LAPD, we don’t get to see the antagonism they have for Joe Pike, but we learn a little bit about him. Bit by bit, we’re getting a picture of Pike so that when we do eventually learn a good deal, there’s an impact. As tensions are at their highest between Elvis and the mafia, we get this exchange:

I asked Pike, “Are you afraid?”
He shook his head.
“Would you be afraid at midnight if we were alone?”
He walked a moment. “I have the capacity for great violence.”
I nodded. So did I. But I thought that I might still be afraid.
…
“Elvis?”
“Yeah?”
“I remember being afraid. I was very young.”

and that’s all we get about that. For now. But it hints at something serious — that we will explore in the future. As serious a moment as that was, I have to chuckle at Pike’s “I have the capacity for great violence.” Yeah, no kidding, buddy — never would’ve guessed.

I don’t know if I can successfully describe why I like this one so much — not that I had real problems with the first two books, but this one seems to have everything clicking and only the minor-est of problems. Funny, snappy writing, solid action, a complex solution, and growth and development in multiple secondary characters. There will be higher points in the series, but for awhile, this will be the standard by which Cole novels are measured by me.

Coming up next: Free Fall which is definitely a departure for Crais, Cole and Pike in many ways.

—–

4 1/2 Stars

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Drawing by Kirsty Stewart, chameleonkirsty on deviantART, used with permission.

Reread Project: Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais

By HCNewton

On August 18, 2014

In Authors, Blog Series, Elvis Cole/Joe Pike, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Reread Project, Robert Crais

Stalking The Angel by Robert Crais
Series: Elvis Cole, #2

Mass Market Paperback, 260 pg.
Crimeline, 1992
Read: August 13 – 14, 2014

Okay, here we go with the second Elvis Cole adventure — I hesitate to call this a mystery, the amount of investigating that Elvis performs before finding what he’s been hired to is pretty minimal. What can I say, the guy’s got himself some great instincts.

The book opens with a great visual — Elvis is doing a headstand in the middle of his office when in walks the man who will go on to hire him, and his lawyer — “the best looking woman [Elvis has] seen in three weeks.”

I said, “You should try this. Invigorates the scalp. Retards the aging process. Makes for embarrassing moments when prospective clients walk in.”

Bradley Warren is not amused, but is in a hurry and needs an investigator so he sticks around to hire Elvis.

Crais packs a lot into the description of Warren’s lawyer — giving us his initial impressions of her, as well as revealing a little about himself to (re-)familiarize readers to his character, in addition to the obvious physical description:

Jullian Becker was in her early thirties, slender in gray pants and a white ruffled shirt with a fluffy bow at the neck and a gray jacket. She held a cordovan Gucci briefcase that complemented the gray nicely, and had very blond hair and eyes that I would call amber but she would call green. Good eyes. There was an intelligent humor in them that the Serious Businesswoman look didn’t diminish.

They explain, Warren does a lot of business (he’s a very influential and wealthy man, they make sure Elvis realizes) with Japanese investors — and in a promotional stunt, he’d arranged a loan of one of the few original copies of The Hagakure from the thirteenth-century, and it was stolen from his home safe. He needs it back in a couple of days, and as distasteful as he fins Elvis, he needs his help. He and Elvis spend a little time annoying each other, before Elvis relents — for Jullian’s sake — and agrees to help find the manuscript. While Warren and Becker jet off to Japan, he starts investigating at the scene of the crime, where he runs into Warren’s very drunk wife who makes several passes at Elvis. Tiny spoiler: Elvis keeps it in his pants for the whole book. Maybe having established his noir cred in Monkey, Crais didn’t have to keep that going (not that Elvis doesn’t notice attractive women, flirt, etc).

Elvis taps a source for someone who dabbles in stolen art and leans on him to get an idea who’d have motive and means to steal The Hagakure, he gets a name. Elvis pushes the dabbler to the edge of despair — he know that his world could come crashing down around him and ruin the lives of his family. Elvis is disturbed by that, musing to his cat later,

“You ever notice . . . that sometimes the bad guys are better people than the good guys?”

It’s a small moment, but reveals a lot about Elvis that the reader needs to know without just telling us the information. The bad guy as a better person (and vice versa) is something we’ll see again in this book — and frequently from here out.

Elvis takes that lead he bullied out of that man and finds someone with ties to the yakuza — and the LAPD task force watching him. Things don’t go well with either group and he has to bring Joe into the picture. Oddly, things escalate with Warren and he starts receiving threats. But he goes ahead with business as usual. After failing to convince him to cancel a public event despite these threats against him and his family, Elvis and Joe help out with security in a location almost impossible to secure.

Pike drifted up to me. “This sucks.”
That Joe.
“I could off anybody in this place five times over.”
“Could you off someone and get away with you here?”
Head shake. “I’m too good even for me.”

Technically, Joe didn’t joke there — but he came close.

Things get worse from there, spiraling out of control and pushing Elvis to the brink. Which allows Crais to explore the friendship between the two — Pike spends a lot of time reassuring Elvis, trying to keep him from going over the edge. With more sensitivity than he showed Ellen Lang in Monkey, Pike’s there, keeping Elvis on track.

“You were doing your best for her, something that no one in her life has ever done.”
“Sure.” Mr. Convinced.
“Ever since the Nam, you’ve worked to hang on to the childhood part of yourself. Only here’s a kid who never had a childhood and you wanted to get some for her before it was too late.”

I know I noticed that theme of protecting childhood — Elvis’ own, and others’ — as I read the series before, but I don’t think I saw how prominent it is, this will be interesting to track.

Speaking of Joe, we get more of the Pike myth — at some point the FBI gets involved in the case. The agent talking to Elvis knows Pike’s name, and understands something of his reputation. He doesn’t want to meet Joe, but he does want to take a look at him. The Agent’s attitude is different than the LAPD’s, Pike’s not despised by him, it’s more like an urban legend that he gets to verify exists. Later, Elvis and Joe have to do a little skulking around a home that the police have staked out, and Pike stays back in case he’s recognized by them. By this point, Crais is making sure you’re wondering what’s going on here.

Elvis — both in dialogue and in narration — is still funny, but I think there are fewer jokes per inch in this book, but I think they’re funnier. Elvis cracks me up, and I appreciate that. He also drops the jokes toward the conclusion, when things get violent and deadly. I noticed that some readers were critical of Elvis’ joking at the similar point in the last book, and Crais must’ve seen something similar twenty years ago — or it’s just him being more disciplined as an author. Hopefully the latter, but I’d assume the former is possible.

Crais seems more confident, more sure of his characters and story this time out — as he should be, this is a stronger book. In addition to a strong hard-boiled detective story, we see themes of friendship, honor; the protection of childhood; criminals acting nobly, “good guys” who need someone like Elvis to threaten to kill them.

A very successful sequel to The Monkey’s Raincoat, Stalking the Angel secures Crais’ place at the top of the field. That’s about all I have to say about it, so I’ll see you next week for one of my favorites, Lullaby Town.

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4 Stars

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Drawing by Kirsty Stewart, chameleonkirsty on deviantART, used with permission.

Reread Project: The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais

By HCNewton

On August 11, 2014

In Authors, Blog Series, Elvis Cole/Joe Pike, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Reread Project, Robert Crais

The Monkey’s Raincoat

by Robert Crais
Series: Elvis Cole, #1

Mass Market Paperback, 201 pg.
Crimeline, 1992 (originally 1987)
Read: August 6, 2014

We start the Reread Project with The Monkey’s Raincoat, which should be read as the pilot for the Elvis Cole series. It establishes the characters, the world, the tone — the story is secondary to that. It’s also the foundation — everything after this will be building on this, and will be an improvement (if for no other reason than Crais gets better). It does all the establishment work pretty well — and some points of the non-establishment work is standard, some of it is quite well done. In the end, its a successful pilot, showing the promise to be delivered in ensuing novels.

“Peter Pan. You told Ellen you wanted to be Peter Pan.”
“Unh-hunh.”
“That’s crap. Stay a little boy forever.”
“It’s not age. Childhood, maybe. All the good things are in childhood. Innocence. Loyalty. Truth. You’re eighteen years old. You’re sitting in a rice paddy. Most guys give it up. I decided eighteen was too young to be old. I work at maintaining my self.”
“So at thirty-five, you’re still eighteen.”
“Fourteen. Fourteen’s my ideal age.”
The left corner of her mouth ticked.

Now, I contend that something happens in a few books to get Elvis to decide to grow up (I’m not convinced he realizes it though) — but for at least a handful/handful-and-a-half novels, this is a great summary of Elvis’ core.

A lot of people will compare Elvis Cole to Spenser and while it’s frequently over-stated, it is a legitimate comparison. And Raincoat Elvis compares pretty strongly with The Godwulf Manuscript Spenser, but Elvis is a lot closer to the character he’ll be from now on, than Godwulf Spenser is to the character he will be following it. Which says something about the thought that Crais put into Elvis before writing, and his experience working with character — Parker really ever had this until he had a few novels under his belt.

Before we get to the Peter Pan self-disclosure, we see that in action — in the decorations of his office, his dress style, the way he talks to prospective clients — all in the first few paragraphs. Which also contain a nice info dump disguised as dialogue, as way to introduce himself to the reader as well as the client who asked him about his qualifications. It gets the job done and it doesn’t feel all clunky and Dan Brown-like. Crais doesn’t do anything ground-breaking here, but so often (especially in first books of a series) this is done in a clumsy way, so it’s nice to see it done smoothly.

There’s a lot to Elvis Cole here that seems straight from the hard-boiled detective starter-kit: he’s got the relationship with a police detective that’s based on mutual respect, but the police detective can’t color outside the lines like Elvis can. He’s got the friend who’s a newspaper reporter — far too busy to have a real conversation with him, but will give him just the right quick answers (while being a real smart aleck) to move the investigation along (in return for tickets to a sporting event). He’s got quite the way with the ladies. He’s a lone wolf type, will drink a lot, he’ll constantly have a wise-crack at the ready, he had a few odd jobs related to law enforcement prior to this, but he can’t work within the system — and so on. It’s what Crais does with these elements — and the rest of Elvis’ characteristics that elevate the character.

So much of the what will separate Elvis from Spenser/Patrick Kenzie/Lincoln Perry/Cormoran Strike/etc. are the quirks and the little details: The nameless, beer drinking cat; the morning yoga; his Elmore Leonard fixation; his Hawaiian shirts and Disney stuff. I liked the fact that Elvis keeps a roll of nickels in his car to use in case of a fist fight. Even more, I like that he had to dig around under the seat to find the roll (and if the interior matches the exterior, it’s not easy to find anything under the seat).

Now, you can’t talk about Elvis Cole without talking about Joe Pike — his business partner with the empty office. Yes, in many ways Joe’s the Hawk to Elvis’ Spenser. But he’s more. By the time we meet him, Elvis has had a couple of very brief phone chats with him, but even the terseness of those won’t prepare us for actually meeting him. Our first introduction to Pike is striking:

The next morning I woke with brilliant white sunlight in my face, smelling coffee. The sliding glass doors were open and Joe Pike was out on the deck. He was wearing faded jeans and a great sweat shirt with the sleeves cut off and blue Nikes and government issue pilot’s sunglasses. He rare takes the glasses off. He never smiles. He never laughs. I’d known Joe Pike since 1973 and he has never violated those statements. He’s six feet one with short brown hair and muscled the way a fast cornerback is muscled, weighing in somewhere between one eighty-five and one-ninety. He had a red arrow tattooed on the outside of each shoulder when he was in The Nam. They pointed forward.

The description today would be a little different. A little. But on the whole, Joe’s consistent, he’s grown a little bit as a character (because of Elvis, he’d assure us), but even with growth, the Joe you get in Monkey’s is the Joe you get in Taken.

Every time Joe’s name is mentioned around someone from LAPD, it’s answered with scorn (at best). Elvis will shed a little light on this eventually when Ellen asks (again, info dump — however small — and dialogue that doesn’t feel forced). But on the whole, all Crais is doing is a bunch of seeds that he’ll harvest later in a way that probably no one reading this can guess. Since this is Elvis’ narration, and Elvis is his friend, we trust that the LAPD is out to lunch on this, and this is reinforced by the clueless way they handle the disappearance of Perry Lang. Time will tell if our trust in Elvis is well-placed.

There’s a clear affection between Elvis and Joe. They trust each other, they tease each other — they depend on each other (without ever coming out and saying it). They’ve known each other more than 15 years at this point, as partners for most of that, and a lot doesn’t need to be communicated anymore

The thing that truly separates Pike from your typical mercenary/bonebreaker-as-sidekick is the way he deals with Ellen Lang. He tells her things about his past, he helps her learn to shoot, he goes out of his way to empower her — and through that, comfort her. Elvis will give her pep talks, he’ll encourage her — even force her to see reality. But Joe (unintentionally) inspires her, and then will (intentionally) show her the inner strength, the character she has and needs to meet the future. Hawk would never do that.

I’m sure I should say something about the story, too. So, Ellen Lang comes (with a lot of prompting from her friend Janet Simon) to Elvis needing help finding her estranged husband, who seems to have taken off with their son (but not their daughters). Elvis isn’t crazy about the idea, but he has rent to pay — so he takes the case and starts poking around looking for the missing talent agent. He finds Mort’s girlfriend, but that doesn’t help but it sheds some interesting light on Mort’s lifestyle. Before long, there’s a body, a couple of kidnappings, a lot of missing cocaine, and a crime boss’ Eskimo enforcer roughly the size of a small bull.

As Elvis goes through the investigation, it’s good, solid stuff carried along by his narration. But there’s nothing other than his narration and the character work he’s started to make it distinctive over any other of a dozen PI’s. But then you get to the conclusion — a big, guns-blazing, bullets-flying, implausible-but-not-really, story climax — and you really start to see the potential for this Crais guy and his pair of Vietnam Vets.

I’m not sure I’d give this 4-stars if I this was my first read of the series, or even of this book (rather than the 6^th or 7^th). But it’s not, I know what seeds Crais planted (whether he intended to or not), I know where’s he’s going with this and how well this sets up the books to follow. As such, it deserves no less than 4-stars.

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4 Stars

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Drawing by Kirsty Stewart, chameleonkirsty on deviantART, used with permission.

Coming soon: The Reread Project

By HCNewton

On August 9, 2014

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, Elvis Cole/Joe Pike, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, News/Misc., Reread Project, Robert Crais

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is that I don’t re-read as much as I used to, so I’m making a greater effort to do that, starting in January of this year. Think I’ve managed to reread 1 book before this week. Whoops.

Anyway, I got to talking about Robert Crais with a buddy last week who was wanting to dip his toe in the water, and wanted to know if he needed to read the Cole/Pike books in order or if he could just read which ever he could get his hands on. I’m sure he regretted asking because rather than the 1 sentence answer that he was probably looking for, he got most of a page of text. And if I’d had more time before needing to get to sleep, I’d have probably written pages. And that was just off the top of my head.

I honestly couldn’t stop thinking about Elvis and Joe after that email — I’d read everything up to book nine, The Last Detective, at least twice. But had only managed to reread the first two Joe Pike books since. So the series is ripe for this kind of thing. If I manage myself correctly, I’ve got enough time to read the series before the next novel hits my doorstep in November. Which makes it a bit more appealing — I love a good deadline.

My reviews will be a bit longer (I think) than usual, if the first one is any indication, anyway (1400 words or so) — looking both at the novel and their place in the series, the changes, developments, ties between novels, themes, etc. I don’t think I’ll have time for the two stand-alone novels that introduced characters now part of the series, so we’ll have to rely on my memory for that. These should go up on Mondays — leaving the few “Dusted Off” posts that I have for those weekdays I just can’t get anything else finished.

Once I’m done with Elvis/Joe, I’ll move on to something else. I like the discipline of one reread a week. I did it with the Nero Wolfe series a couple of years ago, and really enjoyed that.

Hope you enjoy this — and if you’ve read the series, please, please contribute to the comments.

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Drawing by Kirsty Stewart, chameleonkirsty on deviantART, used with permission.

Ready Player One (Audiobook) by Ernest Cline, Wil Wheaton

By HCNewton

On May 13, 2014

In Fiction, Science Fiction

Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline, Wil Wheaton

Unabridged Audiobook, 15 hrs and 46 mins
Random House Audio, 2011
Read: March 19 – 27, 2014

As much as I enjoy a good audiobook, I rarely have time for them, and I usually only listen to books that I’ve previously read. When my family needed something to listen to on a road trip last month, this was an automatic top contender — the printed version of this was probably my favorite book of 2011, and I was due for another read.

I’m so glad we picked this one, it was long enough (an important consideration for a road trip) and it was marvelously done. Wil Wheaton was an inspired choice to read this — not only is he an experienced, and accomplished audiobook performer (is that the right word?); but being who he is — an Internet/Nerd icon and a 1980’s child star — he adds a layer of authenticity and authority to the book.

I’m not going to talk about the book, I can’t. I’ve tried it before, and failed. But it’s just about perfect — funny, adventurous, immersed in pop culture (particularly from the 80’s, my formative years), smart, with heart — a lot of it.

So when you add one of the best performances of Wheaton’s career to that, you’ve got something worth spending 15 hours with. If only for his Sean Connery impression.^* Wheaton captures the flavor, the pathos, the charm of the book and the characters that inhabit it. Go grab the book and give it a read. The audiobook’s almost as good. If you’ve read it, the audiobook’s a good way to revisit it.

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^* There are several other “if only”s I could’ve used there, that’s just the first that came to mind. As Alan Sepinwall would put it, Deyanu!

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5 Stars