Robert Crais: Novels in Order ROBERT CRAIS: NOVELS - SERIES ORDER Below is a listing of Robert's novels in order of publication. Information on these novels, including descriptions, excerpts, and reviews, is accessible by clicking on a novel's title. Note: The year of each novelï¿½s original publication is in parenthesis next to the title. Elvis Cole/Joe Pike Novels Elvis Cole Elvis Cole Created by Robert Crais (1953--) Only in L.A. You haven't seen a P.I. like this one, I'll bet. He has a Mickey Mouse phone and a Pinocchio wall clock in his office on Santa Monica Boulevard, drinks his coffee out of a Spider-Man mug, quotes Jiminy Cricket and claims he wants to be Peter Pan. He's been known to drive a bright yellow 1966 Corvette, and has one of the coolest P.I. homes around, a "redwood A-frame perched on a narrow road off Woodrow Wilson Drive near the top of Laurel Canyon." Oh, and he's named after the King, just in case you don't remember him. He's ELVIS COLE. He's the "World's Greatest Detective." No, really.

Just ask him... But before you call for the guys in the white coats, rest assured he's not quite the flake he seems to be. He packs a Dan Wesson .38 in a shoulder rig, has dabbled in more than one of the martial arts, and has survived Vietnam, not to mention several years as a private detective in Hollywood with an office right near the Musso and Frank Grill, where Chandler used to hang out. He's earned a rep as a tough and conscientious, albeit somewhat unorthodox investigator. Very much an eye for the nineties and beyond, a sort of Spenser via Disneyland, a comparison Crais is perfectly at ease with. Elvis is, in fact, as much a smartass as his Beantown contemporary and, like Spenser, he's in love with the city he lives in. He's also prone to pondering the moral ambiguities and hypocrisies of our times, valiantly striving to do the right thing, showing particular concern for abused and battered women and children. All very chivalric. Spenser, not to mention Marlowe , would be proud.

(In fact, Robert Crais' contribution, "The Man Who Knew Dick Bong," was one of the highlights of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe , a 1988 collection of Marlowe stories by contemporary writers.) And like Spenser, Elvis has a partner who just happens to be a bit bigger, tougher and more at home with the use of violence and not too troubled by attacks of conscience. His so-called "sociopathic sidekick", Joe Pike , is an ex-Marine and part-time mercenary and gunshop owner. He's also a lot quieter than the usually running-off-at-the-mouth Elvis. According to Joe, Clint Eastwood talks too much. Together Cole and Pike make quite a team. An excellent series, and one that has steadily improved as Crais found his own voice, moving beyond the Parker inspiration. Some of the glibness been toned down, allowing us to see the man underneath, and 1999's L.A. Requiem took it all up a giant notch and was something of a watershed for Crais, as a writer. In that one, Crais created a world. And a new way to tell us about it. You could hear the chains snapping...

Oh, he'd already begun to expand and deepen the supporting cast of characters by then. Pike, whom Crais had originally planned to bump off at the end of The Monkey's Raincoat, had stuck around and become more of a full-fledged partner than a mere sidekick. The same went for Lou Poitras, the gruff detective-lieutenant in charge of the Hollywood homicide bureau. And of course Lucy Chenier, the sweet-faced New Orleans-based lawyer who was gradually worming her way into our hero's heart. Even the nameless feral cat who haunted the hills behind Elvis' home was becoming something of a regular. Likewise, 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 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. It was a big powerful book that tears into the heart of darkness that lies at the core of Joe Pike, and was simply one of the best P.I. novels of the decade. In these days of cast-of-thousands mega-selling thrillers like Larsson's Millenium Trilogy , it's perhaps hard to remember how brave and new L.A. Requiem seemed at the time, particularly in the hard-boiled detective genre. But for Crais, it was "incredibly liberating." As he puts it, "The first four or five Elvis Coles were of a kind. They were written in the usual first-person private eye style... and then I began to shake things up a little bit. In Sunset Express, I broke the point of view for the first time and got away with it. I began looking for other ways to do what I was doing. L.A.

Requiem was an extremely experimental book for me to write, and there were plenty of mornings I worried that my readers wouldn't go for it." They went for it. In the time since, Crais has used the approach on a string of best-selling and critically acclaimed novels, both standalone thrillers and books featuring Elvis and, increasingly, Pike. But Crais sees all his books as part of "one big series." Carol Starkey, first introduced in the standalone Demolition Angel (2000) pops up in The Forgotten Man (2005) with a mad crush on Elvis (she refers to Lucy at one point as "Lady Puffinstuff Southern Belle"). At one point in the Joe Pike book The Watchman (2007), to avoid being spotted, Pike leaves his beloved red Jeep Cherokee at a gas station. The Cherokee is promptly stolen by bank robber Max Holman in The Two Minute Rule (2006). Another regular, LA Coroner John Chen, the twitchy, horny string bean and would-be ladies man with a bad case of hero worship for Pike, has become a sort of running gag, a much-needed at times burst of comic relief in several of the books.

And the LAPD K9 cop Scott James and his faithful German Shepherd companion, Maggie, whom Crais introduced in Suspect (2013) Joined forces with Elvis and Joe in The Promise (2015). But if anyone can juggle this ever-expanding cast, it's Crais. Before turning to novels, Crais wrote for television, most notably for such character-heavy and character-driven shows as Hill Street Blues (for which he received an Emmy nomination), Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Quincy, M.E. and The Equalizer . So far, the Elvis Cole series has already nabbed an Edgar, an Anthony, a Macavity, a Shamus and the 2006 Ross Macdonald Award which is bestowed upon the "California writer whose work raises the standard of literary excellence." Can the Nobel Peace Prize be far off? I tell ya, this Crais guy is worth watching...

TRIVIA Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch makes an un-billed but hardly-unrecognizable cameo in The Last Detective , and Connelly returns the favor in Lost Light , when Harry spots his neighbor, a certain LA private eye in a classic yellow 'Vette, and gives him the "smooth sailing, brother" salute. THE EVIDENCE "... next to riots and earthquakes, fires are our largest spectator sport." -- L.A. Requiem "Elvis Cole is Los Angeles." -- Los Angeles Magazine "Of all the Parker-influenced authors (Harlen Coben, Dennis Lehane, Jerry Healy, Earl Emerson, et al), Crais remained perhaps the most reverent acolyte -- until L.A. Requiem, when he made a break of sorts by taking things a little more seriously." An interview with crime-fiction luminary Robert Crais | Books | Dallas News An interview with crime-fiction luminary Robert Crais Filed under Books at Get Daily Dallas News Headlines Sign Up Get Unlimited Digital Access Your first month is less than a dollar. $0.99 for first 4 weeks Subscribe Now Robert Crais wishes he could be like the heroes he writes about in his popular crime novels.

No one has more integrity than Elvis Cole, the wry private eye and champion of the little guy. And who wouldn’t want to be as competent and as intimidating in dangerous situations as Joe Pike, the monosyllabic former cop and mercenary? “I would love to live their lives,” Crais says. There’s just one thing stopping him. “I’m too much of a scaredy-cat.” Elvis and Joe face plenty of peril in their latest adventure, Taken (Putnam, $26.95). But if Crais is timid in comparison with his creations, he’s been mighty successful at it. After giving up a career in TV — he used to write for Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice — to become a novelist in the late ’80s, seven of his titles have been New York Times best-sellers. The last two climbed all the way to No. 2. Taken is the 15th book to feature the duo. In it, Cole’s search for a client’s abducted daughter gets him mixed up with bajadores, ruthless south-of-the-border criminals who kidnap undocumented immigrants as they’re being led into the United States.

The greatest danger the author is likely to face tonight during his Dallas book tour stop, meanwhile, is that some of his die-hard fans — they call themselves “Craisies” — might hug him too hard. He talked about Cole, Pike and Taken by phone from Los Angeles. What compelled you to craft a story about human trafficking? I saw news reports about mass graves that were found south of the border in Mexico. At first, it was thought to be drug cartel murders. It turned out that the victims were immigrants coming from Central America and other points, being transported north through Mexico. They had been intercepted, kidnapped, taken. Their families would be called. Ransoms would be demanded. If the families could pay, the bad guys would keep demanding more until the money ran out. Then the hostages would be murdered in the most heinous ways, like a hammer to the head. When I did research, I found that this kind of crime is more common than we would like to believe. The victims are as helpless as victims can be. They are penniless. Their families are reluctant to involve the authorities. But when you’re talking helpless people in hopeless situations, you’re talking my guys.

This seemed like the kind of thing that Elvis and Joe would get involved in. Is there a story behind the name Elvis Cole? When I created him, I went through a gazillion names. I wanted a name that would suggest to the reader that Elvis wasn’t going to be your standard-issue private investigator. There is a built-in humor that goes with that name. But I sometimes think I outsmarted myself. It seems like every book tour, as many as 15 or 20 people will tell me, “I love your books, but I almost never gave them a try.” I’ll say, “Oh, really? Why is that?” And they’ll say, “I saw your books in the stores for years and I would look at the back and the guy was named Elvis and I just didn’t want to read about a singer!” Whenever the story follows Elvis, he is the narrator. But when it follows Joe, you write in the third person. Why? Joe Pike is a great character, and he’s fun to write about, but he is not a talker. When it comes to communication, he is as minimalist as it gets.

Meaning he could have an exciting adventure, and his account of it would be, “Found the guy, questioned him, shot him.” And that’s all you would get out of him. If Joe were telling the story, it would be an awfully short book. David Martindale is an Arlington freelance writer. books@dallasnews.com Plan your life Robert Crais will appear at Barnes & Noble, 7700 W. Northwest Highway in Dallas, at 7 p.m. View Comments Crais fans 'Taken' on thrilling ride in new novel - CNN.com Crais fans 'Taken' on thrilling ride in new novel By Christian DuChateau, CNN Updated 2:55 PM ET, Fri January 27, 2012 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.

Robert Crais gives private detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike a new kind of crime to solve in "Taken." Story highlights Robert Crais returns to private detective duo Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in "Taken" The characters have appeared in Crais' crime novels since 1987 "Taken" is intense and reads like a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster We should all be so lucky to have friends like Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Private detectives in modern-day Los Angeles, they're the stars of best-selling author Robert Crais' award-winning series of crime novels. Elvis and Joe have been busting bad guys and thrilling millions of readers since 1987's "The Monkey's Raincoat." The books are international bestsellers, published in 42 countries, and have developed a fervent following. In "Taken," Crais's newest novel, his 15th featuring the daring duo, Elvis and Joe take on an especially bloodthirsty group of criminals called bajadores. They are bandits who prey on other bandits along the U.S.-Mexico border, dealing in drugs, murder and kidnapping. "Taken" is intense and fast-paced and reads like a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster.

Though that's not surprising when you consider Crais began his career writing for television series like "Hill Street Blues," "Cagney & Lacey" and "Miami Vice." CNN recently spoke to the author about his new book, his loyal fans and why he's refused to bring Elvis and Joe to the big screen. The following is an edited transcript. CNN: How has writing about Elvis Cole and Joe Pike changed over the course of the series? Crais: I really strive to bring something new to each book. I don't want to write the same book over and over again. I've done Elvis books; I've done Joe books; I've done mixed books, but this time, I made a conscious decision I wanted to tell a story where I could split the book pretty much down the middle and give them 50-50 equal footing so they both have their starring roles. When I discovered this particular story, it just seemed a perfect way to do that. Part of the book, they're working together. Then there's Elvis' track through the story, and there's Joe track, where he's trying to find Elvis and save him. So it just seemed like an ideal way to let these guys share the stage.

CNN: In "Taken," the story jumps between several points of view and moves back and forth in time. How difficult was it to put together? Crais: It was like a crazy puzzle that kept changing. You should have seen my office. I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes. I kept juggling these cards and amending them, making little scrawls on them. Notions came to me, things changed, and I literally shuffled them around like a deck of cards, trying to bring them all into focus so the events were as exciting as I could make them. CNN: How do you start a novel? What comes first, an idea, an image, a scene? Crais: It could be any of the above, but it's usually an image, almost always driven by a character moment. In "Taken," it was the notion of Krista Morales and her hunger to know more about her mother's experience that night in the desert. I just saw her. It was literally my first image in the book.

I saw her staring out into the black desert sky with this open-eyed wonder, trying to see the path her mother took to get to this country. All I had was her face in the moonlight, staring out there, and I just knew whatever she's looking for, I want to find. That was the engine that really kicked off the rest of the book. CNN: "Taken" revolves around a kidnapping on the U.S.-Mexico border by bajadores. What prompted you to write about these bandits? Crais: I had heard about these atrocious mass graves uncovered in Mexico south of the border: 52 people in one grave, 87 people in another, 164 bodies at a ranch with multiple burial sites. If you watch the news at all, you know Mexico is pretty much defining itself now as a war between the government and the various drug cartels. South of the border is fairly well-patrolled by armed groups of thugs who work for the cartels, and those guys end up preying on civilians, policemen and government officials, but they also prey on each other. I found out most of the people who were found in those mass graves were immigrants who were headed North from as far away as Central America.

They were trying to get to the U.S., and somewhere along the way, cartel bandits or "bajadores" would kidnap them, rob them, force them to call their families or employers or whoever and try to extort additional money out of them. When there was no more money to be had, they would just be murdered and buried in mass graves. The business was literally stealing people. The nature of this victim was very moving to me. When you consider that the victim is basically an innocent, penniless person who's just trying to find a way to make his or her life better was super appealing to me, and it seemed like the type of people that Elvis and Joe would sympathize with and risk their lives to try and save. CNN: While there's lots of action in your books, it seems like the friendship between Elvis and Joe is what keeps readers coming back. Crais: Sure. The books are about Elvis and Joe. The books are about their friendship and who they are as men and human beings. I think that's why the readership has grown the way it has and why readers keep coming back to them. There's a value to their friendship that I think people admire and envy and want in their own lives.

I know I do, so I kind of attribute it to other people, too. I would love to have either Elvis or Joe, preferably both, as my friends. They're certainly interesting guys, and we can live vicariously through them for their adventures, but there's something beautiful about these two guys and about having someone so trustworthy and dependable in your life. It's very comforting, I think. CNN: Has the success of the series surpassed your expectations? Crais: I'm certainly thrilled by the reaction. Honestly, I never would have thought the characters would have become as popular as they have. In the beginning, my dream was simply to make a living at it. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to earn a living, but it never occurred to me that the books would become bestsellers. I mean, I'm glad, but none of this was by design. I wrote these guys because they're guys I wanted to spend time with. Writing a book is a long and difficult process for me. I'm a slow writer, so I spend the year with Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in my head. I was thinking about this the other day. I wrote the first book in 1987.

Literally every day since that time, Elvis and Joe have been in my head. They're always there. I started these guys because I like them. I still like spending time with them, and I think that's probably the reason the readers have embraced Elvis and Joe the way they have. Whenever there's a new book, they want to refresh that friendship. CNN: Despite many lucrative offers, you've never sold the screen rights to Elvis and Joe. Why is that? Crais: It's pretty simple. You know the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? I'm concerned that if there's a film of Elvis and Joe, that somehow it will interfere with the collaboration I have with my readers. I'm the first to admit this is probably a knuckleheaded fear on my part, but I have it nevertheless. Books are a collaborative art. Elvis and Joe don't exist until someone picks up one of the books and reads it. In the act of reading, you and I collaborate, and Elvis and Joe come to life inside your head. What I've learned over time is that the Elvis and Joe you see and hear in your head, they are only yours.

There might be however many hundreds of thousands of other people who've read "Taken," and each and every one of them is going to have a unique Elvis and Joe. It's going to be a little bit different from everybody else's because we all bring our own stuff to this. I find that wonderful. To me, that is the great thing about books, and I guess part of me is a little scared that if I let Hollywood get involved, and even if there's a really good movie made, that somehow once you've seen the film, when you come back to the new book next year, that collaboration that you and I have is going to be a little bit different. Because then, the movie is going to have inserted itself. So I'm really jealous and guarded about that. I want your Elvis and Joe to be a product of yours and mine and nothing else.

Robert Crais Robert Crais June 20, 1953 (1953-06-20) (age 57)Independence, Louisiana, United States Pen name Elvis Cole, Jerry Gret Samouche Occupation Edit Block Robert Crais, Author Robert Crais (born June 20, 1953) is an American author of detective fiction. Crais began his career writing scripts for television shows such as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law. He lists amongst his literary influences the authors Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker and John Steinbeck. Crais lives in California's Santa Monica mountains with his family. Biography Edit Block Born in Independence, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, Crais moved to Hollywood in 1976 where he found work as a screenwriter for such television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey and Miami Vice, as well as pilots, TV movies and the NBC mini series Cross of Fire. He was nominated for an Emmy award for his writing on Hill Street Blues.

In the 1980s Crais decided to abandon scriptwriting and become a novelist. Following the death of his father in 1985 Crais was inspired to create his character Elvis Cole writing The Monkey's Raincoat which won the 1988 Anthony Award for "Best First Novel", the 1988 Mystery Readers International Macavity Award for "Best Paperback Original" at Bouchercon XVIV, and has since been named one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Overview Edit Block Crais's usual protagonist and first-person narrator is private detective 'Elvis Cole, an ex-Ranger. Cole's partner is Joe Pike, an ex-Marine. Except for Demolition Angel, Hostage and The Two-Minute Rule, all of Crais' books feature Cole and Pike, with The Watchman (2007), The First Rule (2010) and "The Sentry" (2011) centering on Joe Pike. The author tackles a variety of subjects in his novels. Free Fall was inspired by the Rodney King riots and Sunset Express dealt with a killer who bore an uncanny resemblance to O.J.

Simpson. The most frequently recurring theme in Crais's books is the value of honesty; in his works, the long-term value of coming clean always outweighs the short-term benefits of covering up the problem. Crais also delves into issues of family and loyalty. Themes Robert Crais has stated that "Thematically, again and again my books are about people who are trying to be better than they have been." Crais on film Edit Block In March 2005, Bruce Willis appeared in Hostage, the first Hollywood adaptation of one of his books. Crais refuses to sell the rights to Cole, Pike, and his other recurring characters, preferring to allow his readers to keep their own personal conceptions of the characters. Bibliography Robert Crais Robert Crais ( 1953 - ) Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels: A native of Louisiana, he grew up in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers, and was trained as a mechanical engineer before pursuing his dream of becoming a writer.

After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976, where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major network television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice, and L.A. Law, as well as scripting numerous series pilots and movies-of-the-week for all four major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which The New York Times declared: "A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan's rise to national prominence in the '20s." In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the rigid working requirements of Hollywood, Crais created Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in order to deal with themes he could not readily explore on television. His major literary influences were Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Robert B. Parker, among others. Currently, Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his family, three cats, and many thousands of books. Of his novel, L. A.

REQUIEM, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer-Ross Macdonald-always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base," and Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience." High praise indeed. When not writing, Robert Crais is an active aerobatic pilot, gourmet cook, and backpacker. Robert Crais: L.A. Is 'Natural Canvas' For Nightmare : NPR The canals in LA's Venice neighborhood serve as the scene of a murder in Robert Crais' 2011 novel, The Sentry. David McNew/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption David McNew/Getty Images It's been a few decades, and many published books, but Robert Crais can tell you exactly when mystery writing first caught his attention: He was a bright 15-year-old living in Baton Rouge, La., when he read Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister, which depicted the shady side of sunny Los Angeles through the eyes of private investigator Philip Marlowe.

5 Things You Probably Don't Know About Robert Crais Since then, Crais has found huge success with his own crime novels, also set in LA. The city is the perfect canvas for a modern mystery, and Crais' eyes still grow wide when he talks about what Chandler painted on it. "The way Chandler and his language portrayed Los Angeles, portrayed Philip Marlowe, lit me up the way no other fiction prior to that had," he says. So it's especially satisfying for Crais when critics describe him as one of Chandler's natural descendants; but instead of the wryly laconic Marlowe, Crais' protagonist is a smart-aleck investigator named Elvis Cole. "In the very first book, The Monkey's Raincoat, I say this is not his birth name. He was actually named Philip James Cole, but his mother changed his name when he was 6 years old," Crais says. After Cole's single, party-girl mother had a blast at an Elvis Presley concert, she came home and legally changed his name to Elvis. Crais says the consequences of that have dogged his PI ever since.

Article continues after sponsorship Sarah_Ackerman via Flickr "That instability in his early life is something that I thought important," he says. "That's one of the reasons he is the way he is. He's trying to make sense out of the world; he's trying to make sense of it for himself, and he transfers that to the people he works for." Cole's partner and best friend is Joe Pike, essentially Cole's opposite — as taciturn as Cole is glibly chatty. Cole dresses in colorful Hawaiian shirts, while Pike is black and gray. Cole seems open; Pike is purposefully inscrutable. Crais says Cole's job is to restore normalcy to his clients' lives, even as he knows it's personally unattainable. "He admires normal," Crais says. "I think, in many ways, Joe Pike does, too. They're trying to achieve balance and normalcy because they admire it, but they don't know how to get there.

That's one of the reasons they're so much fun for me to write." 'Potential For Horror And Nightmare' At the mouth of the Venice canals, in LA's Venice neighborhood, Crais points to large locks that control the flow of water into and out of the waterways. Dozens of these canals were built in the early 1900s in homage to the Italian city that is their namesake. Most were later paved over, but the remaining ones are expensive real estate, lined with colorful homes and fragrant gardens. Crais explains how the neighborhood, and its quirky engineering, played a role in his 2011 novel, The Sentry . Read an excerpt of The Sentry "My notion, of course, in the book was that if there were a body floating in the canals, as the canal drained, it would go downstream and be caught in the locks," he says. "And that's one of the devices I used." Walking along the paths that line the canals, Crais notes how tranquil the neighborhood is: Egrets fish in the reeds at the water's edge and the quiet is only disturbed by an occasional bark. It's a good place for things to go wrong.

"It's a natural canvas," Crais says. "You know, where there is peace and when there is tranquility, there's always the potential for horror and nightmare." 'Chasing That Dream Of A Better Life' Crais' most recent book, Taken , is set all over the city and out in the desert. It focuses on human trafficking, which Crais says flourishes in LA because of how the city draws all kinds of people with hopes of reinvention. Read an excerpt of Taken "People come to LA because they're chasing that dream of a better life," he says. "That's why I came here, because I thought it would be a place where I would find other people like me; people who wanted to write, people who had a dream of being something else. And that proved to be true." Crais has prospered in LA. He was so certain that writing would be his life that he dropped out of Louisiana State University a semester short of graduation, packed his car and drove to Hollywood. His ear for dialogue got him work on television scripts in the '70s and '80s — he's written for Hill Street Blues, L.A.

Law and Cagney & Lacey — but novels, especially mysteries, always tugged at him, and eventually he turned his back on a lucrative television career to write books full time. After that, he's never looked back. Crais' 18 books, three stand-alone novels and 15 in the Cole-Pike series, have made him financially comfortable — and kind of famous. After all, not many New York Times best-selling authors can say they've had a pizza named after them. Down the street from the canals, in the cafe at Small World Books, where dishes are named for famous writers, waitress Rachel Hanak lists the ingredients of the Robert Crais Pizza: salami, garlic, pepperoni and mushrooms. "It's really good," she says. '465 Square Miles Of Insanity' Get a Sneak Peak At Robert Crais' Upcoming Novel: Read an excerpt of Suspect In his car, driving up into the Hollywood Hills and Runyon Canyon, Crais points to the kind of house Elvis Cole lives in — a glass-front A-frame with a panoramic view of the Los Angeles Basin.

He says he glimpsed a similar house when he first moved to LA, and it became something for him to aspire to. "And, many years later, when I created Elvis Cole, I thought why not put him in a place that had meant so much to me? So I gave him an A-frame house," Crais says. He also sends Cole and Pike on regular runs through the hills. From up here, the view of the city is stunning. Crais gazes fondly on the houses and apartments; the palm trees and the skyscrapers' glass windows winking in the distance. LA can be a hard city, but it will always be home for Crais. "There's the Hollywood sign; there's Griffith Observatory; there's the great, amazing Los Angeles Basin," he says. "It's 465 square miles of insanity and the best food on the planet." It's also a never-ending source of inspiration for one of modern crime's most admired writers. 5 Things You Probably Don't Know About Robert Crais: 1. He ran away to join the circus when he was a kid. He was 13 and his parents let him do it for the summer.

He worked as the assistant to the human cannonball, but it didn't last very long. After he discovered that the alleged explosion was actually an illusion, he decided the paying public needed to know they were being had. "He's a fake! The human cannonball is a fake!" didn't go over too well with the circus owners, so they returned Bobby to the bosom of his family. But his sense of justice and fair play lives on in the persona of Elvis Cole. 2. He was almost an engineer, which would have been a tragedy for lovers of crime fiction. He was in the School of Engineering at Louisiana State University, but engineering wasn't something he wanted to do. He wanted to write, so a semester short of graduation, he dropped out. "It did not go over well on the homefront," Crais says, "as you can imagine." Presumably, all is now forgiven. 3. He doesn't know what Elvis Cole or Joe Pike look like. "I can see their bodies; I can see their movement when I'm writing them, their arms, legs and so forth," Crais says, "but their faces are always blurs. Probably if I saw their faces, I wouldn't be able to write them.

I don't know why." 4. And he doesn't want you to, either. Crais says he wants his readers to feel free to imagine what Cole and Pike look like for themselves. It's part of the pleasure of reading, he says: "I don't do this alone, you know. It's like a compact between the reader and the writer. Together, we create this experience." That's why he won't ever sell his Cole-Pike novels to Hollywood — not for TV, not for movies. And there have been several offers. (He does allow the stand-alones to be made, however: Hostage, a thriller about a beaten-down police negotiator who is called in to try to free a terrorized family, starred Bruce Willis.) 5. He is not, he insists, Elvis Cole. But they do share two important things: the aforementioned sense of justice and fair play, and an unfortunate affinity for some of the loudest, most colorful shirts ever sold. Crais says, "Elvis is not me; he's his own person, and that's important to remember. But I do happen to like really colorful shirts — OK, really loud prints.

And I thought, 'Hey, this is something that Elvis could have — my fashion sense.'" Yikes. You'd have to borrow Pike's sunglasses to look at Crais. (Not sure how you'd take them off him, though. Crais guesses Pike has maybe removed his sunglasses four times in the whole 15-book series.) Robert Crais: Taken ROBERT CRAIS: TAKEN The extraordinary new crime novel from the New York Times bestselling author. When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing adult daughter, she isnï¿½t afraid, even though sheï¿½s gotten a phone call asking for ransom. She knows itï¿½s a fake, that her daughter is off with the guy Nita will only call ï¿½that boy,ï¿½ and that they need money: ï¿½Even smart girls do stupid things when they think a boy loves them.ï¿½ But Nita is wrong. The girl and her boyfriend have been taken by bajadores ï¿½ bandits who prey on other bandits, border professionals who prey not only on innocent victims, but on each other.

They steal drugs, guns, and people ï¿½ buying and selling victims like commodities, and killing the ones they canï¿½t get a price for. Elvis Cole and Joe Pike find the spot where they were taken. There are tire tracks, bullet casings, and bloodstains. They know things look as bad as possible. But they are wrong, too. It is about to get worse. Going undercover to find the two young people and buy them back, Cole himself is taken, and now it is up to Joe Pike to retrace Coleï¿½s steps, burning through the hard and murderous world of human traffickers to find his friend. But he may already be too late.. Robert Crais - IMDb IMDb 18 January 2017 8:17 PM, UTC NEWS Robert Crais was born on June 20, 1953 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. He is known for his work on Hostage (2005), Cross of Fire (1989) and Quincy M.E. (1976).

See full bio » Born: a list of 8 people created 21 Sep 2012 Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Robert Crais's work have you seen? User Polls Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. See more awards » Known For 1998 The Invisible Man (TV Movie) (written by) JAG (TV Series) (story by - 1 episode, 1995) (teleplay by - 1 episode, 1995) - Desert Son (1995) ... (story by) / (teleplay by) 1995 Earth 2 (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode) 1989 Cross of Fire (TV Movie) (written by) Miami Vice (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode, 1988) (excerpts - 1 episode, 1988) (written by - 1 episode, 1986) - Borrasca (1988) ...

(writer - as Elvis Cole) 1987 In Self Defense (TV Movie) (teleplay) 1986 The Twilight Zone (TV Series) (written by - 1 episode) - Jake and Elise (1983) ... (story by) Cagney & Lacey (TV Series) (written by - 2 episodes, 1982) (teleplay - 2 episodes, 1982) 1981 The Monkey Mission (TV Movie) (teleplay) 1981 Riker (TV Series) Quincy M.E. (TV Series) (teleplay - 6 episodes, 1978 - 1979) (writer - 3 episodes, 1978 - 1979) (story - 3 episodes, 1979) (written by - 1 episode, 1979) 1984 Partners in Crime (TV Series) (executive consultant - 1 episode) - Pilot (1984) ...

(executive consultant - as Bob Crais) 1982 Cagney & Lacey (TV Series) (executive story consultant - 5 episodes) - Witness to an Incident (1982) ... (executive story consultant) 1981-1982 Hill Street Blues (TV Series) (executive story consultant - 9 episodes) - An Ounce of Prevention (1979) ... (executive story consultant) - Semper-Fidelis (1979) ... (executive story consultant) 1982 The Mississippi (TV Series) (producer) Hide Novel (Elvis Cole #1): The Monkey's Raincoat See more » Official Sites: Writing is solitary, but bringing a book to life requires a team. See more » Trivia: Famous for his Los Angeles crime novels, particularly the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike books. He also lives in Los Angeles. See more » Trademark: Taut prose and writing that's to the point.

See more » Star Sign: 50 crime writers to read before you die - Telegraph 50 crime writers to read before you die Scheming: a scene from the film The Talented Mr Ripley, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel Frances Fyfield's recent work has relaxed into a more comfortable format 12:01AM GMT 23 Feb 2008 From G K Chesterton to Elmore Leonard, The Daily Telegraph presents a list of of its favourite crime writers of all time Robert B. Parker talks After a debate that left senior members of the Telegraph's literary staff with pulled hair, black eyes and, in one case, an infected bite, we this week present our list of the 50 great crime writers of all time. We present them in no particular order, and make no apology for our omissions. But we would like to know what you think. Should Ellery Queen have been two of the names on the list? Hate Highsmith? Log on, or write in, and say so. We wanted to compile a list of writers we had, jointly and severally, loved.

We wanted to include writers like Dash Hammett, who brought something new and exciting to the genre; like Elmore Leonard, who turns an old trick in it with incomparable style; and like Poe, who invented it. We did not, except incidentally, take into account popularity. Who, we asked ourselves finally, are the crime writers who can actually write? We believe any serious reader will profit from acquaintance with any of the writers on this list. And, just because we love you, as a bonus 51st entry we interview Robert B Parker - an unrivalled pulp stylist who may be the best crime writer you've never read. GK Chesterton 1874-1936 The most fluent journalist of his generation, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was also a master of the detective story. Father Brown - his sceptical and worldly-wise priest - featured in dozens of exquisite entertainments. Settle into a comfy chair and enjoy. SL Read: The Complete Father Brown (1986) Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930 Conan Doyle's pipe-smoking detective is so well known that Sherlock has become a synonym for sleuth.

He never said the catchphrase; the illustrator gave him the hat; continuity errors abound… but he's brilliant. SL Read: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 Poe was a man of formidable talents - not least of which, sadly, was drinking himself to death. Before that, though, he gave us fiction's first detective, in Auguste Dupin, and hairiest murderer, in an orang-utan. SL Read: The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) Ed McBain 1926-2005 As well as writing the script for Hitchcock's The Birds, McBain (real name: Evan Hunter) more or less invented the police procedural. The detectives of Isola's 87th Precinct wise-cracked for half a century, and their spare style was the prime influence on Hill Street Blues.

SL Read: King's Ransom (2003) Kyril Bonfiglioli 1929-85 A raffish former art dealer, Bonfiglioli created - in Charlie Mortdecai - an antihero (also a raffish art dealer) of irresistible charm. Charlie has the manner of a demented Bertie Wooster and the morals of a polecat. Great titles, too. SL Read: The Mortdecai Trilogy (1991) James Ellroy 1948- Ellroy's labyrinthine novels chart a West Coast underworld of corruption and evil, played out against real historical events. Bent cops, nightsticks, psychopaths and seductresses. Makes The Silence of the Lambs resemble a vicar's tea party. SL Read: The Black Dahlia (1987) Janwillem van der Wetering 1931- The capers of Grijpstra and de Gier, aka The Amsterdam Cops, are oddly appealing. One plays the drums; the other the flute. They frequent canals. There's a cat. Unique and very Dutch.

SL Read: Outsider in Amsterdam (1975) Carl Hiaasen 1953- A master of the comic crime novel, Hiaasen patrols Florida's Everglades. His villains are big business, petty crims and That Mouse. Skink, a feral former Florida governor who lives off roadkill, often features. SL Read: Double Whammy (1987) Dashiell Hammett 1894-1961 It’s a cinch to argue that Hammett was the most influential stylist of the past century and probably the father of the modern literary novel. After honing his style on pulp magazines, he famously proved that high literary art was not only possible, but best achieved, through spare rather than florid or heavily mannered prose. He influenced Raymond Chandler, who then inspired generations of writers to explore the lyrical possibilities of laconic, muscular writing while instinctively rejecting popular pre-Hammett styles as dull or overwrought. Hammett created revolutionary models for the morally ambiguous hero (Sam Spade) and the equal partnership of modern marriage (Nick and Nora Charles) now so universal that we have forgotten our debt to him.

Reprinted in 2004, his Continental Op stories proved so stunningly fresh that the 1920s hero could have carried a Blackberry without raising eyebrows unduly. JJ Read: The Maltese Falcon (1930) Dan Kavanagh 1946- In the 1980s, the shady, elusive Kavanagh - crime-writing alter-ego of Julian Barnes - produced four grimy, winningly absurd tales starring Duffy, a bisexual ex-copper with a heart of coal. SL Read: The Duffy Omnibus (1991) Margery Allingham 1904-66 Often taken as one of a trio with Marsh and Sayers, Allingham has a pace and frivolity all her own. She created a world that manages to be reassuring yet fraught with danger. TC Read: The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) Charles Dickens 1812-1870 Like his friend Wilkie Collins, Dickens was obsessed with crime. Bleak House's Inspector Bucket is one of the first detectives in fiction. It's a pity that The Mystery of Edwin Drood will forever remain unsolved.

SR Read: Bleak House (1852-3) Georges Simenon 1903-1989 Fabulously prolific Belgian master, said to have schtupped more than 10,000 ladies and written more than 300 novels. We don’t know how long he spent on each lady, but he reckoned to write 60 pages of fiction a day. His greatest creation was Maigret, an unassuming detective with a brain like a sponge and the quiet moral determination of a true hero. Other detectives deduce; Maigret absorbs. The best of the novels drop Simenon’s detective into a social environment in which, by doing very little, he unravels a whole world of secrets and interconnections. So it is in The Yellow Dog, in which a small town in the gloomy off-season gives up its private passions one by one to the detective’s patient observation. A whole school of modern detectives still walks in Maigret’s large footprints.

SL Read: The Yellow Dog (1931) Agatha Christie 1890-1976 Christie did not have the purest prose style and she played hard and fast with the genre's rules but in Marple and Poirot, she invented two of our most enduring literary characters. TC Read: Peril at End House (1932) Wilkie Collins 1824-1889 The Moonstone established the genre's ground rules: red herrings; a long list of suspects; the man from Scotland Yard, and a nod to a pressing social issue, in this case opium addiction. TC Read: The Moonstone (1868) Jonathan Latimer 1906-83 Admired for his William Crane novels of the 1930s, which parodied hard-boiled crime fiction. Where most private eyes drink like fish with little effect, boozy Crane is more often found sleeping it off than detecting. JK Read: The Fifth Grave (1941) Ruth Rendell 1930- Ruth Rendell, the creator of Inspector Wexford, is one of Britain's best-loved writers.

She brought psychological realism and darker themes to crime fiction in novels such as Talking to Strange Men and Live Flesh. SR Read: The Water's Lovely (2006) Ngaio Marsh c. 1895-1982 A New Zealander who created a quintessentially English detective, the dishy Roderick Alleyn, who featured in 32 sparkling novels. Female fans' hearts were broken when Alleyn eventually married. JK Read: Vintage Murder (1937) Benjamin Black 1945- Black's two novels set in 1950s Dublin, in which lumbering pathologist Quirk investigates suspicious deaths, are bracingly bleak. Also known to the police as John Banville. JK Read: Christine Falls (2006) John Dickson Carr 1906-77 The master of the "impossible crime", he claimed to have come up with 80 versions of the locked-room mystery, usually solved by his Falstaffian sleuth Dr Gideon Fell. Also wrote as Carter Dickson.

JK Read: The Hollow Man (1935) Michael Innes 1906-94 An Oxford don who wrote inventive crime fantasies. Crooks are more likely to get caught by quoting from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam than by fingerprints when erudite copper John Appleby is about. JK Read: The Weight of the Evidence (1943) Raymond Chandler 1888-1959 He may have forgotten to tell us who murdered the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, but otherwise Chandler can't be faulted. Every reluctant step Philip Marlowe takes through California's mean streets carries him further into legend. JK Read: Farewell, My Lovely (1940) Friedrich Dürrenmatt 1921-90 The most famous of this Swiss author's chilling novellas is The Pledge, in which a policeman finds his Holmes-like powers are useless for dealing with the real world's random brutality.

JK Read: The Pledge (1958) Michael Gilbert 1912-2006 The stories featuring Mr Calder and Mr Behrens, two seemingly benign old boys who are actually ruthless secret service assassins, are examples of this underrated writer's unnervingly civilised approach to horrific violence. JK Read: Even Murderers Take Holidays and other Mysteries (2007) Donald Westlake 1933- The king of the comic caper, whose novels usually feature amiable criminals bungling their way into sticky situations. The novels he writes as "Richard Stark", featuring the amoral thief Parker, are darker fare. JK Read: What's So Funny? (2007) Colin Bateman 1962- Any appearance by Bateman's regular protagonist, journalist Dan Starkey, heralds the imminent death in amusing fashion of half the population of Belfast. Comic thrillers that are actually comic and thrilling.

JK Read: Wild About Harry (2001) Frances Fyfield 1948- Fyfield emerged as a rival to Minette Walters when publishers in the mid-1990s were obsessed with grim, cod-psychological nasties inspired by Ruth Rendell. She's relaxed into a more comfortable format. JJ Read: The Art of Drowning (2006) Reginald Hill 1936- Everyone thinks they know Hill through the TV series "inspired" by his creations Dalziel and Pascoe - to the extent that they miss his writerly flourishes and teasing way with readers. He's a victim of his own success. JJ Read: Good Morning Midnight (2004) Andrea Camilleri 1925- Camilleri's writing suits his hero Inspector Montalbano, a Sicilian with a broad sense of humour. Camilleri's real subject is the state of Sicily, but his characters are vivid and their dilemmas eternal.

TC Read: The Patience of the Spider (2007) Henning Mankell 1948- Each book finishes with fatty Wallander crashing about the bushes in a tracksuit, but the Swede's existential misery is delightful and every novel is absorbing and satisfying. TC Read: Sidetracked (1999) Patricia Highsmith 1921-1995 No one reads Patricia Highsmith for consolation: there is rarely a happy ending in which order is restored, and her complex, morally ambiguous characters are just as likely to escape justice as to receive it. Highsmith’s career was kick-started by Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film version of her 1950 novel, Strangers on a Train, but Tom Ripley (who also appeared on screen, in The Talented Mr Ripley) is her most infamous creation, and he appeared in five of her novels, chilly and scheming and repellent. There is a worrying strata of authentic darkness that underpins her work, and it is no surprise that she lived a peculiar, isolated life, during which she preferred the company of snails to humans.

TC Read: The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) James Lee Burke 1936- A decade ago, Lee Burke gave the gritty lyricism of his series about alkie Louisiana cop Dave Robicheaux full rein and created a one-man revival of Southern Gothic writing. One of America's finest novelists in any field. JJ Read: Black Cherry Blues (1989) Jim Thompson 1906-1977 There was no more brutal and brilliant exponent of old-style pulp than the “Dime Store Dostoevsky” – Jim Thompson. Thompson churned out more than 30 novels in the course of his drunken, borderline criminal life. Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me are both narrated by murderously unhinged small-town lawmen, who mask their moral vacuity with goofy homespun wisdom. The Grifters shows the noose tightening nastily on small-time cons. The Getaway follows a viperous Bonnie-and- Clyde-style pair of robbers on the run, pitching them finally into a chilling hell of their own making. Thompson’s novels are set, largely, in a world where there are no good guys.

Dark as hell, his books are all the darker for being funny. SL Read: The Getaway (1959) Walter Mosley 1952- Mosley's Easy Rawlins is a classic film noir gumshoe with the twist that he's a black war vet at the dawn of the civil rights crusade. Bill Clinton named Mosley as a favourite. JJ Read: Devil in a Blue Dress (1991) Denise Mina 1966- In Mina's Garnethill novels, an ex-mental patient clinging to sanity in the underbelly of Glasgow isn't as grim as it sounds. Her wit and warmth render the trials of her heroine oddly life-affirming. JJ Read: Garnethill (1999) Steig Larsson 1954-2004 A crusading Swedish journalist who died in 2004, leaving the manuscripts of three thrillers. They have received high praise and the first volume, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has just been published here.

JK Read: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008) Ronald Knox 1888-1957 Knox gained fame as a Roman Catholic priest but made a huge contribution to Golden Age crime. Miles Bredon (Dorothy L Sayers stole the surname for Peter Wimsey) is an insurance investigator in The Three Taps; there are five other books. He coined the 10 commandments of the detective novel in 1929 and was later reduced to translating the Bible. AMcK Read: The Viaduct Murder (1925) EC Bentley 1875-1956 Inventor of the Clerihew and a schoolmate of GK Chesterton. Trent's Last Case (1913) is a landmark in detective fiction because it breaks several of the form's cardinal rules. AMcK Read: Trent's Last Case (1913) Lawrence Block 1938- Block shows a love of the cosy locked-room school in his Burglar series. His genius is in full flower in the Matt Scudder series, about a hard-boiled ex-cop investigating sleazy crimes.

AMcK Read: All the Flowers Are Dying (2005) Edmund Crispin 1921-1978 Bohemian schoolmaster Bruce Montgomery (aka Crispin) spoofed post-war crime fiction with great larkiness. His dotty professor and amateur sleuth, Gervase Fen, even admits he's a fictional character. JJ Read: Holy Disorders (1945) William McIlvanney 1936- McIlvanney, a considerable mainstream novelist, has set three crime novels in Glasgow: Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties. They probably inspired the TV series Taggart, but are far more intelligent and subtle. AMcK Read: Laidlaw (1977) George V Higgins 1939-1999 Elmore Leonard acknowledges Higgins as his major influence. His books are almost all in (foul-mouthed, funny, well observed, poetically cadenced) dialogue. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the best known but none are duds.

AMcK Read: The Rat on Fire (1981) Dorothy L Sayers 1893-1957 Sayers was responsible, with Agatha Christie, for fixing in the public mind the idea (demonstrably false) that women are particularly good at crime writing. Unlike Christie, Sayers was. She was good at writing, full stop. She translated Dante’s Inferno when it was little-known, except to specialists, and wrote a radical radio play about Christ which caused an outcry. Sayers had her faults. She was donnish and high-jinxy to a degree which might have made even other members of the High Oxford school (Michael Innes, Edmund Crispin) blush. In Clouds of Witness she alludes to a fairly obscure quotation. Lower-class characters drop their aitches left, right and centre, while Lord Peter is perhaps too much of a good thing, even as snobbish wishfulfilment. Some think the solution to The Nine Tailors is a swizz; but the genius of the missing item in Five Red Herrings is, on its own, enough to confirm her greatness.

AMcK Read: Five Red Herrings (1931) Anthony Boucher 1911-68 The revered US crime fiction critic also created characters such as Nick Noble, a former cop who props up a bar while his ex-colleagues bring him their trickiest cases. JK Read: The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) Mickey Spillane 1918-2006 Creator of brutish but honest private dick Mike Hammer, who, by bashing the bejesus out of crooks, helped make Spillane one of the best-selling writers of the 20th century. JK Read: I, the Jury (1947) James Grady 1949- His thrillers set ordinary people in dangerous situations engendered by government greed and corruption. His first novel, Six Days of the Condor, was made into a film. JK Read: Six Days of the Condor (1974) George Pelecanos 1957- The pulp fiction bard of the sleaziest side of Washington DC. The capital's rigid firearms laws generate imaginatively grisly alternatives to the traditional shoot-out.

JJ Read: The Big Blowdown (1996) Robert Crais 1954- Just when you think there can't be a new take on the old "PI with a mildly psychotic sidekick" formula, Crais proves you right. Elvis Cole is a homage, but also a labour of literary love. JJ Read: The Watchman (2007) John Lawton 1949- Lawton immerses a newspaper baron's son, Inspector Troy, in the scandals of post-war Britain. His skewed social history is utterly absorbing. JJ Read: Black Out (1995) Elmore Leonard 1925- Leonard owes much to George V Higgins, but his snappy dialogue, learned as a copy-writer, slick prose and plotting are instantly recognisable. "If it sounds like writing," he says,"I rewrite it." TC Read: Maximum Bob (1991)

Question: Who writes the Elvis Cole crime novels?
Answer: Robert Crais