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?'"


From Publishers Weekly
In his eighth book about wise-cracking Los Angeles private detective Elvis Cole, Crais has expanded his narrative reach and broadened his characters' horizons to produce a mature work that deserves to move him up a notch or twoAinto Parker or Connelly country. He's done this by focusing on Joe Pike, Cole's tough and hitherto totally enigmatic partner. It's Pike who breaks in on Cole's reunion with Lucy Chenier, his lawyer/broadcaster lover who has just moved from New Orleans, to ask for Elvis's help in tracking down the missing daughter of a rich and powerful Hispanic businessman. When the girl turns up murdered in Griffith Park, it's Pike who gives a nerdy medical examiner valuable assistance; and when it turns out that the girl's death is linked to several other murders, it's Pike who is charged with killing the chief suspect. Through flashbacks to Joe's past life as an abused child, a highly motivated teenage soldier and an L.A. cop fighting to keep a corrupt partner from destroying his family, we learn more about Pike than we did in the seven previous Cole books. This new focus also allows Crais to keep Elvis's often annoying throwaway lines to a minimumAalthough more pruning could have been done with no loss of flavor. The book's scope is wide enough to include many other memorable characters, especially a rough-edged, vulnerable police officer named Samantha Dolan, plus a choice of plausible villains. There may be one too many metaphoric descriptions attempting to link aspects of the L.A. landscape with the moods and deeds of its inhabitants, but overall Crais seems to have successfully stretched himself the way another Southern California writerARoss MacdonaldAalways tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
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 crimesAand 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.AChristine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., Medford, OR Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Joe Pike, a quiet, deeply reserved ex-cop turned detective, and his partner, Elvis Cole, pursue the unknown murderer of Pike's former girlfriend. Lloyd represents the Hollywood police and the other characters in a believable manner. The story's fast-paced action requires the listener to sort through disjointed flashbacks that provide motive for the murder. Lloyd ratchets up the tension as a conspiracy and police cover-up lead to a surprising conclusion. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Karen Garcia is shot in the head while jogging in an L.A. preserve. It would have been written off as just another violent death, but her father, Frank, is the most powerful Hispanic politician in L.A. Frank Garcia's Hispanic background tells him not to trust the cops, so he asks Joe Pike, an ex-cop, to observe the investigation. Many on the force still believe Pike killed his partner 12 years earlier. Pike is also one of Karen Garcia's former lovers. Pike's partner, Elvis Cole, serves as our guide through an investigation sullied by politics, personal ambition, and a growing media spotlight. Cole finds his own life thrown into chaos when Pike becomes a suspect, the lead female detective on the case takes an interest in him, and it appears that the killer may be connected to the death of Pike's old partner. The eighth Elvis Cole^-Joe Pike novel is easily the most ambitious in an outstanding series. Readers will learn what drives Pike; how he uses his taciturn demeanor as a shield; and why the toughest thing he ever did involved neither guns nor physical bravery. This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience. Wes Lukowsky


From Kirkus Reviews
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) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"One of the best crime novels I've ever read. Absolutely terrific!"
--DAVID BALDACCI

"TERRIFIC ENTERTAINMENT . . . A POWERFUL PORTRAIT OF LOS ANGELES IN OUR TIME: SWIFT, COLORFUL, GRIPPING, A REAL KNOCKOUT."
--DEAN KOONTZ

"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


Review
"One of the best crime novels I've ever read. Absolutely terrific!"
--DAVID BALDACCI

"TERRIFIC ENTERTAINMENT . . . A POWERFUL PORTRAIT OF LOS ANGELES IN OUR TIME: SWIFT, COLORFUL, GRIPPING, A REAL KNOCKOUT."
--DEAN KOONTZ

"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

FROM OUR EDITORS

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

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Los Angeles is a city of perpetual reinvention. Inviting, with a promise of infinite hope, it can also be a glittering landscape of debilitating isolation. The city's lost souls take comfort in its promise-the notion that tomorrow could be the day to start all over again, to transform oneself into someone else. Someone more powerful, more beautiful, more daring.

FROM THE CRITICS

Washington Post

A must-read for contemporary hard-boiled fans.

Ellery Queen

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.

Marilyn Stasio - The New York Times Book Review

...[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.

Library Journal

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.

AudioFile - Miriam B. Kahn

Joe Pike, a quiet, deeply reserved ex-cop turned detective, and his partner, Elvis Cole, pursue the unknown murderer of Pike's former girlfriend. Lloyd represents the Hollywood police and the other characters in a believable manner. The story's fast-paced action requires the listener to sort through disjointed flashbacks that provide motive for the murder. Lloyd ratchets up the tension as a conspiracy and police cover-up lead to a surprising conclusion. M.B.K. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile, Portland, Maine Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

One of the best crme novels I've ever read. — David Baldacci