A brilliant new crime novel from the beloved, bestselling, and award-winning master of the genre–and Joe Pike’s most perilous case to date.
Joe Pike didn’t expect to rescue a woman that day. He went to the bank same as anyone goes to the bank, and returned to his Jeep. So when Isabel Roland, the lonely young teller who helped him, steps out of the bank on her way to lunch, Joe is on hand when two men abduct her. Joe chases them down, and the two men are arrested. But instead of putting the drama to bed, the arrests are only the beginning of the trouble for Joe and Izzy.
After posting bail, the two abductors are murdered and Izzy disappears. Pike calls on his friend, Elvis Cole, to help learn the truth. What Elvis uncovers is a twisted family story that involves corporate whistleblowing, huge amounts of cash, the Witness Relocation Program, and a long line of lies. But what of all that did Izzy know? Is she a perpetrator or a victim? And how far will Joe go to find out?
Investigator Elvis Cole and his partner Joe Pike take on the deadliest case of their lives in the new masterpiece of suspense from #1 New York Times-bestselling author Robert Crais.
It seemed like a simple case–before the bodies started piling up…
When single-mother Devon Connor hires private investigator Elvis Cole, it’s because her troubled teenage son Tyson is flashing cash and she’s afraid he’s dealing drugs. But the truth is devastatingly different. With two other partners in crime, he’s been responsible for a string of high-end burglaries, a crime spree that takes a deadly turn when one of them is murdered and Tyson and his girlfriend disappear.
They stole the wrong thing from the wrong man. Determined to get it back, he has hired a team that is smart and brutal, and to even the odds, Cole calls in his friend Joe Pike. But even they may be overmatched. The hired killers are leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. A few more won’t make any difference.
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are joined by Suspect heroes LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his German shepherd, Maggie, in this heart-stopping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike keep their promises. Even if it could get them killed…
Elvis Cole is hired to find a woman who’s disappeared, a seemingly ordinary case, until he learns the missing woman is an explosives expert and worked for a Defense Department contractor. Meanwhile, LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, track a fugitive to a house filled with explosives—and a dead body. As the two cases intertwine, they all find themselves up against shadowy arms dealers and corrupt officials, and the very woman they promised to save may be the cause of their own deaths.
The search for a missing girl leads private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike into the nightmarish world of human trafficking in this #1 New York Times bestseller from Robert Crais.
When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing daughter, she’s sure it’s a ruse orchestrated by the girl and her boyfriend. She’s wrong. They’ve been taken by bajadores—border bandits who prey on the innocent by buying, selling, and disposing of victims like commodities.
Cole and Joe Pike start an undercover investigation to find the couple, but their plan derails when Cole disappears, leaving Pike to burn through the murderous world of human traffickers to find his friend as well as the missing young people. But he may already be too late…
Private investigators Joe Pike and Elvis Cole get double-crossed in this twisty, gripping New York Times bestseller that will have readers on the edge of their seats.
When gangbangers shake down the modest owner of a Los Angeles eatery, Joe Pike intervenes. For all intents and purposes, Pike saved Wilson Smith’s life. But for reasons of their own, Smith and his lovely niece, Dru, are curiously resentful. It’s only when Pike’s feelings for the woman deepen that he and his partner, Elvis Cole, discover that Dru and her uncle are not at all who they seem, and everything Pike has learned about them is a lie. But it’s much more than a deception. It’s a trap. And with every new twist it’s proving to be a killer.
Joe Pike and his partner Elvis Cole must solve the murder of an old friend and his entire family in this gripping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.
When Frank Meyer and his family are executed during a home invasion, the police begin investigating the secret life they’re sure Meyer had. Joe Pike’s on a hunt of his own: to clear his friend’s name, and to punish the people who murdered him. What starts out as a simple trail gets twisted fast by old grudges, double crosses, blood vengeance, and a crime so terrible even Pike and his partner Elvis Cole have no way to measure it.
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.
P.I. Elvis Cole’s relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained. Then the unthinkable happens. While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son Ben is staying with Elvis, the boy vanishes without a trace. When the kidnappers call, it’s not for ransom, but for a promise to punish Cole for past sins he claims he didn’t commit. With the LAPD wrestling over the case, and the boy’s estranged father attempting to take control of the investigation, Cole vows to find Ben first. But Cole’s partner, Joe Pike, knows more about this case than he has said. Pike lives in a world where dangerous men commit crimes beyond all reckoning. Now, one of those men is alive and well in L.A.—and calling Elvis Cole to war. . . .
Prominent restaurateur Teddy Martin is facing charges in his wife’s brutal murder. But he’s not going down without spending a bundle of cash on his defense. So his hotshot attorney hires P.I. Elvis Cole to find proof that Detective Angela Rossi tampered with the evidence. Rossi needs a way back to the fast track after falling hard during an internal investigation five years ago. But Cole needs to know if she’s desperate enough to falsify the case against Martin in order to secure her own position. As Cole and his partner Joe Pike work their way through a tangle of witnesses and an even greater tangle of media, they begin to suspect that it’s not the police who are behind the setup.
“Terrific entertainment . . . A powerful portrait of Los Angeles in our time: swift, colorful, gripping, a real knockout.”—Dean Koontz
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.
Praise for L.A. Requiem
“One of the best crime novels I’ve ever read. Absolutely terrific!”—David Baldacci
“Darker, denser, deeper, and more satisfying than anything he’s written before.”—The Denver Post
“[A] whodunit with salsa and soul . . . [Crais] keeps his plot pounding along.”—People
Elvis Cole is just a detective who can’t say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies: Her fiancé, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer’s sure he’s in trouble—the kind of serious trouble that only Elvis Cole can help him out of.
Five minutes after his new client leaves his office, Elvis 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 the case is through, every copy in the LAPD will be gunning for a pair of escaped armed-and-dangerous killers—Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.
“Elvis Cole provides more fun for the reader than any L.A. private eye to come along in years.”—Joseph Wambaugh
“Elvis lives, and he’s on his way to being crowned the king of detectives.”—Booklist
“Quick, cutting wit . . . a keen ear.”—The New York Times Book Review
Hollywood’s newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelsen, 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 Nelsen wants is for Elvis to comb the country for the 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 Nelsen’s ex-wife in a small Connecticut town, she’s nothing like he expects. She has some unwanted—and very nasty—mob connections, which means Elvis could be opening an East Coast branch of his P.I. office…at the bottom of the Hudson River.
“Elvis [Cole] is the greatest . . . [ he is] perhaps the best detective to come along since Travis McGee.”—San Diego Tribune
“[Crais is] far better at the private-eye-novel racket than most writers.”—Newsweek
Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye . . . he quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He’s a literate, wisecreacking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up.
The blonde who walked into Cole’s office was the bestlooking woman he’d seen in weeks. The only thing that kept her from rating a perfect “10” was the briefcase on one arm and the uptight hotel magnate on the other. Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable—something that belonged to someone else: a rare thirteenth-century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure.
Just about all Cole knew about Japanese culture he’d learned from reading Shogun, but he knew a lot about crooks—and what he didn’t know his sociopathic sidekick, Joe Pike, did. Together their search begins in L.A.’s Little Tokyo and the nest of notorious Japanese mafia, the yakuza, and leads to a white-knuckled adventure filled with madness, murder, sexual obsession, and a stunning double-whammy ending. For Elvis Cole, it’s just another day’s work.
Praise for Stalking the Angel
“Stalking the Angel is a righteous California book: intelligent, perceptive, hard, clean.”—James Ellroy
“Out on the West Coast, where private eyes thrive like avocado trees, Robert Crais has created an interesting and amusing hero in Elvis Cole.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Devotees of the rock ‘em, sock ‘em school should find [Stalking the Angel] tasty.”—The San Diego Union
“Elvis Cole provides more fun for the reader than any L.A. private eye to come along in years.”—Joseph Wambaugh
WINNER OF THE ANTHONY AND MACAVITY AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL • NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AND SHAMUS AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL
Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye . . .
He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He’s a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up.
Praise for The Monkey’s Raincoat
“Outstanding characters, tight plot, and scintillating prose style. . . . This fast-paced story speeds Elvis Cole to a chilling, heart-stopping ending.”—Mystery Scene
“Is Bob Crais good? Put it this way: if they’re taking you out to put you against the firing squad wall, and you want to enjoy your last moments on earth, pass on the last cigarette and ask for an Elvis Cole novel.”—Harlan Ellison
“Far and away the most satisfying private eye novel in years. Grab this one—it’s a winner!”—Lawrence Block
“The best private eye novel of the year . . . lots of action; bright, crisp dialogue; and sharply drawn characters.”—The Denver Post
“Robert B. Parker has some competition on his hands. . . . Elvis Cole is an appealing character and Crais’s style is fresh and funny.”—Sue Grafton
“In Crais, a new star has appeared on the private eye scene—a dazzling first novel.”—Tony Hillerman
