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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.
Private eye partner Joe Pike, a tough and taciturn ex-L.A.P.D. officer with a shadowed past, to help search for the missing daughter of tortilla king Frank Garcia. Alternating first and third person narration, the novel probes the characters and their problems, illuminates the Los Angeles scene, and keeps the reader guessing in masterful fashion. If you had Crais pegged as a west coast Robert B. Parker (i.e., magical style but invisible plot), this complex and enormously entertaining novel should change your mind.
More Reviews and RecommendationsFollowing a tremendously successful run as a television screenwriter, Robert Crais broke into the publishing world in a big way with his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike mystery novels, proving that for a select few, Los Angeles truly can be a city of dreams.
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January 04, 2007: This is another great story and I love the humorous dialog. Although Robert Crais' web site states you don't need to read the books in order, I've been voraciously doing just that. I received two Elvis Cole books for Christmas and just finished reading them both. It's a pity I can't get the final two books in this series until Barnes and Noble reopens in the morning!
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May 13, 2005: Robert Crais, with his 'L.A. REQUIEM' has broken through the designation of 'genre writer'. With his serial detective Elvis Cole, and even more, with PI Joe Pike, he has created the true existential detective. We crave to learn more about these two men and what has made them what and who they are. Crais, along with Michael Connolly, has gleaned some real insights into this City of the Angels, which is all the more amazing since neither of these men came from Los Angeles. They nevertheless, paint an unforgettable (and accurate) portrait of the heart and soul of the City of Angels and what makes it and its people unique. 'LA REQUIEM' is Crais' master work and is a great mystery to boot.
Name:
Robert Crais
Current Home:
Los Angeles, California
Date of Birth:
1953
Place of Birth:
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Education:
B.S., Louisiana State University, 1976; Clarion Writers Workshop at Michigan State University
Awards:
Anthony and Macavity Awards for Best Novel of the Year for The Monkey's Raincoat, 1987
Los Angeles is known as the city of dreams, largely because so many Americans dream of breaking into the Hollywood film and television industry. In 1976, Robert Crais went west from Louisiana to pursue that very dream. As it turned out, he became one of the lucky few to break into the industry in a big way. Crais has since written for such hugely popular TV shows as Quincy, Cagney and Lacey, Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law, just to name a few. However, after achieving such success (which included a prestigious Emmy nomination) in a business that so many would give everything to break into, Robert Crais decided to step away and pursue his true dream. Frustrated by the collaborative process that comes with screenwriting, and inspired by pulp-pioneers such as Raymond Chandler, Crais became a mystery novelist. With his massively popular Elvis Cole/Joe Pike mysteries series, it seems as though success has a funny way of following Crais no matter what he decides to do.
Crais published his very first novel in 1987. The Monkey's Raincoat introduced mystery fans to Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, a pair of L.A. private investigators who would become his most-beloved recurring characters. Crais's transition from screenwriting to novel-writing was an astoundingly smooth one. The Monkey's Raincoat earned him nominations for the Edgar, Anthony, Shamus, and Macavity awards, winning both the Anthony and Macavity for "Best Novel of the Year." Crais's publisher was so overjoyed by the novel's success that he encouraged Crais to keep the Cole/Pike team going. "I started writing these books to get away from writing other people's concepts, like TV and movies," Crais told Barnes&Noble.com. "I never expected to write these guys as a series...but the book proved to be so popular and the characters were so popular that my publisher wanted more." What followed was a series of bestselling mysteries, including Stalking the Angel (1989), Free Fall (1993), L.A. Requiem (1999), and last year's The Forgotten Man.
Although the series was not part of Crais's original plan, he still seems to hold the Cole and Pike team closer to his heart than anything he has previously written. He explained, "The characters have deepened, and I think they kind of reflect what's going on with me and the world as I see it." When asked about whether or not we can expect to see the crime-solving buddies on the big screen anytime soon, he said, "I think I would have a difficult time in the collaborative process when other people suddenly put their fingerprints on Elvis and Joe," further illustrating his personal feelings for his P.I. team.
As much as Crais loves his series, he does occasionally write novels outside of the Cole/Pike world. His latest, The Two-Minute Rule, tells the story of career criminal Max Holman, a recently released-from-prison bank robber who finds himself hunting an entirely different kind of criminal after his son is gunned down. The book has since raked in positive reviews from such publications as Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, and The Library Journal. While The Two-Minute Rule does not feature Cole and Pike, Crais fans will notice one significant similarity between his latest novel and his famous series -- the Los Angeles setting. "I can't think of a better place to set crime novels because of what Los Angeles is. Los Angeles is the main where the nation goes to make its dreams come true. When you have a place like that where so many people are risking their very identities, not just money and cash, but they're risking who they are because it's their hopes and dreams, when you have that kind of tension and that kind of friction, you can't help but have crime."
Fortunately, Crais will never have to succumb to such friction and tension since, for a success story such as he, Los Angeles completely lived up to its promise of being the city of dreams.
Some fun and fascinating outtakes from our interview with Crais:
"My first job was cleaning dog kennels. It was especially, ah, aromatic during those hot, humid Louisiana summers, but it prepared me for Hollywood."
"My fiction is almost always inspired by a character's need or desire to rise above him-or herself. No one is perfect and some of us have much adversity in our lives; it is those people who struggle to rise above their nature or background that I find the most interesting and heroic."
"Fun details? Like Elvis Cole, I have a dry sense of humor. Sometimes I am so dry that people don't know I'm kidding and think I'm being serious. I enjoy this because their reactions are often funny. Also, I wear beautifully colored shirts like Elvis Cole, only I was wearing them before him. People will say, ‘Look, RC dresses just like Elvis Cole,' and I'll say, 'No, Elvis Cole dresses like me!' I also wear sunglasses like Joe Pike, but not indoors and not at night."
"Elvis Cole wrote two episodes of television. No lie. It happened like this: I had written episodes of Miami Vice and Jag that were rewritten by person or persons unknown -- changed so badly that I didn't want my name on them, so I used Elvis Cole's name as a pen name."
What book most influenced your life or career as a writer?
It wasn't just one book or author, but many and from many genres -- Chandler and Hammett and Robert B. Parker; John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway; Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury; the list goes on. But if I was forced to narrow the field, I would have to say Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister. It was the first book in the detective field I read. I fell in love with the main character, Philip Marlowe, and the setting, Los Angeles, and the power of Chandler's language.
What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
My favorite books change with my mood. I'll give you a few titles today, but ask me again in six months and the answers might be different. Let's start with five:
What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
I listen to all types of music, from rock to country to classical, but not while I'm writing. If the music is something I like, I end up thinking about the music instead of thinking about what I'm writing.
If you had a book club, what would it be reading?
The Two Minute Rule, of course!
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
Nonfiction books. I love history, biographies, and popular science.
What are you working on now?
Next year's book, which happens to be an Elvis Cole novel.
Many writers are hardly ‘overnight success' stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
Ha. It took me about fifteen years to become an "overnight success." I had scores and scores of rejections at the beginning of my career when I was writing short stories. I found fairly easy success when I wrote television, but I ‘rediscovered' rejections when I turned to novels. I wrote two novels that were so bad I didn't even market them. Then I wrote The Monkey's Raincoat, which was rejected nine times before it sold. Even then, my career built slowly, but steadily. Each book sold more than the last. I finally hit the bestseller lists with the paperback publication of L.A. Requiem. The worst rejection I received was back in my short story days. I received one of those pre-printed form rejections with a very short, two-word note in the margin. The note was: You suck.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
If you've already written something, write something else. Newer writers will often finish a short story or novel, then live or die through the submission process without working on new material. Keep writing! My other big tip is to write what you love. This might seem obvious to some, but many aspiring writers chase trends or write what other people tell them they should write. This is a huge mistake. Write what you love. Follow your passion. And try to write well. None of us -- including myself -- is ever so good that we can stop trying to improve.
The Barnes & Noble Review
For some time now, Robert Crais has been threatening to step beyond the confines of the genre audience and into the consciousness of a wider, more mainstream readership, the same readership that has recently embraced such diverse figures as Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, and Michael Connelly. Crais's latest novel, L.A. Requiem a big, complex, involving novel of revenge and murder in modern-day Los Angeles might just be the book that elevates him to that same level of popularity.
L.A. Requiem is the eighth novel in a series that features Elvis Cole, a wisecracking private detective in the grand tradition, and his tough, terse, hard-bitten partner, Joe Pike. More than any of the previous seven entries, this one takes us deeply into the complex personal lives of its two protagonists.
As the story begins, Elvis is facing a major, but not unwelcome, lifestyle change: His girlfriend, Lucy Chenier, has just relocated to Los Angeles with her nine-year-old son Ben, drawn by both a lucrative job offer and the chance to live in closer proximity to Elvis. Trouble begins on moving day, which is rudely interrupted by a phone call from Joe Pike. An old girlfriend of Pike's named Karen Garcia a figure from out of his enigmatic past has just gone missing. Pike, contacted by her panic-stricken father, has volunteered to search for Karen, and asks Elvis to help. From this point forward, events take on an unexpected life of their own.
What looks like a routine missing-person case begins, almost immediately, to undergo a sinister seriesofmetamorphoses. Just hours after Elvis and Pike begin their investigation, Karen's body is located. She has been shot to death by an unknown assailant. The case shifts direction again when police sources reveal that Karen is the fifth such victim in 19 months. When word leaks out that a serial killer is loose in Los Angeles, the inevitable media circus ensues. Desperate for results, police concentrate their attention on a single, unlikely suspect who happens to resemble the psychological profile provided by the FBI. When that suspect is murdered by a man falsely identified as Joe Pike, Pike finds himself in jail, and Elvis finds himself forced, once again, to reexamine his most fundamental notions about the nature of this case.
Galvanized by the arrest of his partner, Elvis begins to question the supposedly random nature of the series of murders that culminated with Karen Garcia's death. Searching for connections, he focuses on the period, some 12 years before, when Joe Pike and Karen first came together. In the classic tradition of a Ross MacDonald novel, past events prove inextricably connected to the dramas of the present day. Incidents from Pike's former life as a Los Angeles policeman incidents such as an unresolved Internal Affairs investigation, the arrest and conviction of a roving pedophile, and the violent death of Pike's partner, Abel Wozniak are among the threads that Elvis follows as he struggles to uncover the truth behind a seemingly disparate series of killings, and to identify the damaged, dimly glimpsed figure responsible for them.
En route to that discovery, and to the violent and visceral events that follow in its wake, L.A. REQUIEM pushes at the boundaries of the traditional detective novel, moving easily between the primary, present-day narrative and a deliberately disconnected series of flashbacks that illuminate Pike's traumatic formative years and his brief, violent career with the LAPD. The result is a novel that functions on at least three levels: as an effective, tightly plotted mystery; as a moving examination of the growth and development of an individual soul; and as a complex presentation of the sometimes noble, sometimes demented things people do in the name of love.
L.A. Requiem has all the earmarks of a breakout book. It is painful and exhilarating, ambitious and exciting, shrewdly constructed and deeply felt. It is the best and biggest work to date from a writer who understands the inner workings of his chosen form, and who has something useful to tell us about love, loyalty, and the underlying causes of violence.
Bill Sheehan
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.
Private eye partner Joe Pike, a tough and taciturn ex-L.A.P.D. officer with a shadowed past, to help search for the missing daughter of tortilla king Frank Garcia. Alternating first and third person narration, the novel probes the characters and their problems, illuminates the Los Angeles scene, and keeps the reader guessing in masterful fashion. If you had Crais pegged as a west coast Robert B. Parker (i.e., magical style but invisible plot), this complex and enormously entertaining novel should change your mind.
...[W]hat starts as a routine search for a rich man's pampered daughter becomes a tense face-off with a killer and a serious examination of the limits of friendship.
A must-read for contemporary hard-boiled fans.
Self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective" and professional Angeleno, Elvis Cole (seen in Sunset Express, LJ 3/1/96) must choose between his longtime love, Lucy, and his best buddy, agency co-owner Joe Pike, during a serial murder investigation. When Pike's former girlfriend Karen disappears, Karen's father turns to Pike and Cole for help. But Pike, an ex-cop, still faces the grudge of his former LAPD co-workers, who hold him responsible for the death of his partner. As Cole soon finds, working with the cops may be the most difficult detective work he faces. When the man who discovered Karen's body is shot to death, a witness places Pike at the victim's home. Now it's up to Cole to solve both crimes--and help his friend avoid the death penalty. Elvis Cole fans will love this latest page-turner featuring the fast-talking private eye and his taciturn tattooed partner. Recommended for all public libraries.--Christine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., Medford, OR Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Crais bids to break out of his successful Elvis Cole formulastreamlined plotting, smiling charm, slick action, happy endingswith Elvis's ambitious seventh case. This one begins as quiet as you please, with Elvis's unofficial partner Joe Pike asking him to help find the missing daughter of Joe's friend, tortilla king Frank Garcia. Not even the news that Karen Garcia has been shot dead sets it apart. What's new are Crais's persistent glimpses into closemouthed Joe's violent past as an abused child, a Marine on reconnaissance, and an LAPD officer who left plenty of enemies behind when he left the force. Now that powerful Frank Garcia wants Joe and Elvis given permission to tag along with the cops and report back to him on the case, all the bad blood between Joe and his ex-colleagues boils over. And when a second killing seems to have Joe's name on it, L.A.'s finest are only too eager to haul him in. Meantime, things have gotten complicated for Elvis too: Samantha Dolan, the tough Robbery-Homicide cop assigned to babysit him, wants to follow him all the way home, a plan that doesn't sit well with Lucy Chenier, the Baton Rouge attorney who switched homes and jobs to be with Elvis. As the tension ratchets up, even Elvis (Indigo Slam, 1997, etc.) seems to notice that his trademark unvoiced wisecracks are out of key, and he shuts them down long enough to go after the real killer before Joe can get packed off to the big house where all the inmates are who'll just love to greet him. The killer, by design, is a nonentityone of the few letdowns in a taut, suspenseful case that opens up scars that easygoing Elvis never looked into before. (Book-of-the-Month fetured selection;author tour)
David Baldacci
One of the best crme novels I've ever read.
Dean Koontz
A terrific entertainment and a powerful portrait of Los Angeles in our time: swift, colorful, gripping, a real knockout.
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Hear our exclusive audio interview with Robert Crais (9:24).
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