For those that haven’t read a lot of Detective Fiction. As a genre, detective fiction generally speaks about the corruption in society and the unending depravity of humankind. Usually the hero (sometimes but not always the main character) is the light that works to overcome the forces of darkness. In most novels there are standard architypes of good and evil with all the shades in between. Dashiell hammit (1894-1961)(The Maltese Falcon – 1930, The thin Man 1934) is attributed to creating the genre while writing short stories in the 1920’s. He was writing about his experiences with the Pinkerton Detective agency. Of Dashiell Hammett, Biography.com says “Despite only having published five novels, Hammett remains one of the most influential writers of his time. He created an entire subgenre of fiction as well as some of the most compelling leading men in literature, and his “hard-boiled” world has had a lasting effect on television, film and a wide array of writers.”
Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep – 1939) and Mickey Spillaine (Mike Hammer Series) are two other well know detective fiction authors of modern times.
The Elvis Cole Detective Series by Robert Crais chronicles the work lives of Elvis Cole the self titled “Worlds greatest detective” and his partner Joe Pike.
Elvis isn’t your typical PI, he has a Mickey Mouse phone, Jimminy Cricket figurines on his desk and a Pinnochio clock with eyes that move side to side along with the seconds on the wall his office.
Now before you write Elvis off as a flake, he made it through the vietnam war as a Ranger (The group known for finding and infiltrating enemy encampments and freeing hostages), he also dabbles in several of the Marshall arts and packs a .38 Smith and Wesson. Besides being a bit of a smartass and thinking he’s funnier than other people usually do, he’s also pretty good at pondering the hypocricies and moral ambiguities of our time. The more you get to know him through the books, the deeper he gets. Throughout the series he valiantly strives to do the right thing. Many of his clients are battered and abused children and women and/or those that are looking for missing loved ones.
Joe Pike is Elvis’ business partner and (somewhat sociopathic) sidekick. Pike is also an ex-Marine (Ranger), part-time Mercenary and gunshop owner. He’s a bit bigger, tougher and tends to be more at home with violence than Elvis. He’s also not troubled as much by attacks of conscience. Pike is a quiet person. According to Joe, Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry talks to much. As the series develops Pike is the feature character in some of the books and Crais works on his character development and helps the reader to understand why Pike is like he is, what his childhood was like etc.
The books develop both Elvis’ and Pike’s characters quite a bit from the initial offering in “The Monkey’s Raincoat – 1987” through to the most recent offering “The Promise” slated for release in November this year. (I’ve already pre-ordered this one). The series has shown steady improvement and unlike many main PI characters like Marlowe in the Chandler novels, Elvis has evolved and Crais has started to show the reader more of the man underneath the wise-cracking exterior.
The first four books in the series are written in the first person; Standard detective fiction style. After these Crais moved away from First person perspective for the first time with “The Sunset Express”. In “LA Requiem” Crais really experimented with several perspectives including first person, and wove in several underlying storylines as well. 
Since L.A Requiem Crais has used a similar approach to produce a string of best-selling and critically acclaimed novels and stand alone thrillers and books featuring Elvis and Pike.
Exerpt from thrillingdetective.com
“Crais had already begun to experiment with shifting points-of-view. Still, there wasn’t much in those early books that prepared readers for L.A. Requiem’s sprawling, multiple storylines and muscularity. Crais dropped most of the glib wisecracks and quirkiness and headed straight for the jugular, straddling genre boundaries, merging the private detective novel, the police procedural and the action thriller in a dark, engrossing tale of murder, betrayal, corruption, child abuse and the painful secrets that lie buried in the human heart. It was no longer the Elvis Cole show — in fact, much of the action focused on his partner: taciturn Pike, he of the 24/7 shades and the always forward-pointing arrow tattoos.”
Besides the main characters, Crais has also introduced a cast of re-appearing supporting characters such as Carol Starkey, the tough female police detective that was blown up in “Demolition Angel” and returns with a major crush on Cole in “The forgotten Man”. Cole has a girlfriend in a few of the novels too, Enter Ms Lucy Chenier from New Orleans, A divorced southern belle attorney. Both Lucy and her little boy Ben become very close to Elvis and Lucy decides to move them to LA at one point. Then there is the Girl Crazy, “all about the tang” (meaning Puntang not the juice) LA Coroner John Chen. Chen’s sole purpose in life is to try and sleep with women. He doesn’t have a lot of success but provides great comic relief at various points in the novels.
After all is said and done I wholeheartedly recommend you checkout the writings of Robert Crais. They don’t have to be read in sequence, but I found it does help with some of the background stories that leave you to concentrate on the particular storyline in each novel without having to learn as much about the main characters to feel you know them.
I’ll leave you with a couple quotes to give you an idea of the value and depth of the writing as I see and feel it.
“Some of us find our way with a single light to guide us; others lose themselves even when the star field is as sharp as a neon ceiling. Ethics may not be situational, but feelings are. We learn to adjust, and, over time, the stars we use to guide ourselves come to reside within rather than without.” – Elvis Cole – LA Requiem
“Moths swarmed around the parking lot lamps, banging into the glass with a steady tap-tap-tap, and I wondered if they welcomed the dawn. At dawn, they could stop slamming their heads into the thing that forever kept them from the light. People don’t have a dawn. We just keep slamming away until it kills us.” – Elvis Cole
A little background on Robert Crais and a book synopsis.
Robert Crais wrote for tv shows before writing novels and wrote most notably for Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Quincy M.E. and The Equalizer. So far he has received and Edgar awared, and Anthony Award a Macavity, a Shamus and the 2006 Ross Macdonald Award which is bestowed upon the California writer whos work raises the standard of Literary excellence.
The most recent Crais book I re-listened too was “The Watchman”
Here’s a brief synopsis from robertcrais.com
ROBERT CRAIS: THE WATCHMAN: A Joe Pike Novel
RUNNING TIME 8HRS UNABRIDGED.
AUDIO BOOK BY BRILLIANCE AUDIO.
The city was hers for a single hour, just the one magic hour, only hers.
Larkin Conner Barkley lives like the City of Angels is hers for the taking. Young and staggeringly rich, she speeds through the city during its loneliest hours, blowing through red after red in her Aston Martin as if running for her life. Until out of nowhere a car appears, and with it the metal-on-metal explosion of a terrible accident. Dazed, Larkin attempts to help the other victims. And finds herself the sole witness in a secret federal investigation.
For maybe the first time in her life, Larkin wants to do the right thing. But by agreeing to cooperate with the authorities, she becomes the target for a relentless team of killers. And when the U.S. Marshals and the finest security money can buy can’t protect her, Larkin’s wealthy family turns to the one man money can’t buy — Joe Pike.
Pike lives a world away from the palaces of Beverly Hills. He’s an ex-cop, ex-Marine, ex-mercenary who owes a bad man a favor, and that favor is to keep Larkin alive. The one upside of the job is reuniting with Bud Flynn, Pike’s LAPD training officer, and a man Pike reveres as a father. The downside is Larkin Barkley, who is the uncontrollable cover girl for self-destruction — and as deeply alone as Pike.
Pike commits himself to protecting the girl, but when they immediately come under fire, he realizes someone is selling them out. In defiance of Bud and the authorities, Pike drops off the grid with the girl and follows his own rules of survival: strike fast, hit hard, hunt down the hunters. With the help of private investigator Elvis Cole, Pike uncovers a web of lies and betrayals, and the stunning revelation that even the cops are not who they seem. As the body count rises, Pike’s biggest threat might come from the girl herself, a lost soul in the City of Angels, determined to destroy herself unless Joe Pike can teach her the value of life…and love.
Credits:
www.robertcrais.com
www.thrillingdetective.com
www.biography.com
