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ROBERT
CRAIS: CHASING DARKNESS - L.A. TIMES
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
'Chasing Darkness' by Robert Crais
Elvis Cole is back in Crais' latest
thriller, a smart, elegant novel
about a manhunt that spans the
unique communities of L.A.
By Donna Rifkind, Special to The
Times
July 1, 2008
For months now, "Chasing Darkness,"
the 12th novel by Robert Crais to
feature Los Angeles private
investigator Elvis Cole, has been
generating lots of anticipatory buzz
among fans (some of whom have
organized themselves into an online
group called the Craisies). What is
it about the Elvis Cole books --
whose first volume, "The Monkey's
Raincoat," was published 21 years
ago -- that keeps readers wanting
more?
The answer lies in a shrewd mixture
of consistency and novelty. As is
the case with many a classic
detective, there are things about
Cole that never change. For years,
he's lived alone in a hillside
A-frame off Mulholland Drive, where
he practices taekwondo and watches
red-tailed hawks from his deck. He's
fond of a stray black cat that bites
his visitors and drinks his beer.
He has a perennially unsettled love
life: His longtime girlfriend, Lucy
Chenier, recently moved back to her
native Louisiana, maybe for good. As
an investigator, Cole is always
getting himself in trouble,
infuriating police and criminals
alike with his smart mouth and his
dogged independence. Just as often,
he's rescued from certain death by
his best friend and crime-solving
partner, a laconic but imposing
ex-cop named Joe Pike.
Crais' style throughout all the
Elvis Cole novels is as constant as
his hero. He delivers sleek, pacy
thrillers that, in accordance with
Elmore Leonard's advice, leave out
the parts that readers tend to skip.
The action mostly swerves around a
crowded Los Angeles that's as
precisely charted as a Thomas Guide.
And Crais is as meticulous in
describing the tasks performed by
all kinds of people involved in
crime work, including coroner
investigators, lawyers, federal
agents and police officers.
While Crais is smart enough not to
mess with these core elements, his
fiction has evolved. In recent
books, he's exposed the tragic pasts
of both Cole and Pike, adding a
soulful dimension that had me
blubbering at the end of "The Last
Detective" and rooting for the
damaged heroes in "L.A. Requiem" and
"The Watchman." He's also made
regulars of a few other characters,
including Carol Starkey, a
bomb-squad expert whom Crais first
introduced in "Demolition Angel,"
and geeky LAPD criminalist John
Chen, who provides comic relief when
wiseacre Cole isn't in the mood to
joke around.
In "Chasing Darkness," Crais turns
the spotlight away from Pike, whose
presence dominated 2007's "The
Watchman," and points it once again
toward Cole. Crais also abandons the
back stories here, returning to the
linear plotting that propelled his
older novels.
The new book's action begins during
fire season, when the "air, jittery
from the heat, rises in swaying
tendrils like kelp from the seabed,
making the city shimmer." Two cops,
going door to door to evacuate
residents in a flame-threatened
Laurel Canyon neighborhood, find a
corpse in one of the houses. It
looks like suicide, made more
gruesome by the discovery of a photo
album at the dead man's feet that
contains pictures of seven women,
each photographed moments after
being brutally murdered.
Cole's interest in the case turns
out to be deep. The suicide was a
former client of his, Lionel Byrd,
whom Cole helped clear of murder
charges three years before in the
case of a dead prostitute named
Yvonne Bennett.
At the time, working on behalf of
Byrd's defense attorney, Cole had
provided evidence to prove that Byrd
was not the killer, and the man was
set free. But the fifth photo in the
album found near Byrd is Bennett,
while subsequent pages hold pictures
of two additional female murder
victims. Had Cole been wrong about
Byrd, and -- worse still -- was his
error responsible for the deaths of
two more women?
The LAPD's deputy chief, Thomas
Marx, "a tall rectangular man built
like a sailing ship, with tight skin
stretched over a yardarm skeleton,"
has organized a task force for the
case, determined to pin the murders
on Byrd. But Cole, who's got reason
to believe the police are more
concerned with protecting the
interests of a city councilman than
with seeking the truth, remains
unconvinced.
He strikes out on his own, following
Lucy's long-distance advice: "If you
don't like their facts, find your
own facts." Cole's search takes him
all over L.A., from swanky downtown
law offices to a faded stucco tract
house in Reseda; from velvety
Pasadena lawns to burned-out yards
in Sylmar, from the homeless camps
under the 4th Street Bridge to a
politician's office in a strip mall.
In every corner, secrecy prevails,
and nobody -- not even the corpses
-- is what he or she appears to be.
Whom can you trust? As in the past,
Crais asks the question through
Cole, who'd be unemployed or dead
many times over without help from
Pike and others. It's a trust that's
mirrored in the relationship between
Crais and the reader, collaborators
in these elegantly constructed
dreams. As Raymond Chandler, one of
Crais' idols, wrote once in a
letter: "The lucky writers are those
who can outwrite their readers
without outthinking them."
Donna Rifkind, a Los Angeles-based
reviewer, has written for the
Washington Post and the New York
Times.
Chasing Darkness
An Elvis Cole Novel
Robert Crais
Simon & Schuster: 274 pp., $25.95
Copyright 2008 by
The L.A. Times.
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