Chasing Darkness
It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women – one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole's world upside down.Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero.But the discovery of the death album in Byrd's lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims – two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can't help but wonder – did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives?Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death – a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be.Chasing Darkness is a blistering thriller from the bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime writing.
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El último detective
Elvis Cole se enfrenta a uno de los momentos más delicados de su vida: acaba de recibir la llamada de un hombre que asegura tener secuestrado a Ben, el hijo de Lucy, su compañera sentimental. El niño, que estaba al cuidado de Cole mientras su madre se hallaba de viaje, salió al jardín a jugar y pocos minutos después desapareció sin dejar rastro. Según las palabras del hombre que retiene a Ben, el secuestro está relacionado con un oscuro suceso del pasado de Cole. Éste fue el único superviviente de un batallón americano que fue aniquilado en Vietnam, y aunque en su momento fue premiado por su heroicidad, parece que alguien sigue resentido por el hecho. Para complicar aún más las cosas, Cole tiene que enfrentarse con Richard, ex marido de Lucy y padre de Ben, quien además de culparle por lo acontecido entorpece La búsqueda al insistir en la participación de su propio equipo de investigadores. Ayudado por su socio, Joe Pike, y la policía Carol Starkey, Cole se vuelca de pleno en el rescate en una carrera contra el reloj, mientras revive unos espinosos episodios que creía haber enterrado. Robert Crais ahonda en cuestiones vitales al retomar el pasado de su protagonista en esta novela que aúna con acierto una clásica trama detectivesca con un thriller de gran intensidad.
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Free Fall (Elvis Cole[4])
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Free Fall
Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies. Her fiance, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer is sure he's in trouble the kind of serious trouble that only Cole can get him out of. Five minutes after his new client leaves the office, Cole 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 long, every cop in the LAPD is gunning for a pair of armed and dangerous killers Cole and Pike.
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Hostage
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Hostage
When a convenience store robbery goes horribly wrong the three young men who perpetrated the crime make a run for it. Hotly pursued by the police they crash into the suburban home of an accountant and take the family hostage, and before they know it, an armed siege ensues. This is the last thing the local sheriff wanted after all, he left the force in L.A. because of the stress, and this is about as stressful as it gets. But the gang have chosen the wrong accountant to hold hostage. He works for the Mafia and he holds all the local Family's financial records. Soon the mob are on the scene and a nightmarish, high tension three way stand off develops.
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Indigo Slam
An action packed, razor sharp thriller featuring LA private eye Elvis Cole. Meet Elvis Cole. Vietnam Veteran, private eye who carries a.38 and is determined never to grow up. 15 year old Teri Hewitt has been left holding the babies now that her dad, Clark has disappeared without trace. She wants Cole to find him. The search reveals a chronically unemployed drug addict caught up in counterfeiting scams and mixed up with the Russian mafia and Vietnamese Gunmen. As the action heads towards a gunfight in Disneyland and Cole dodges his almost girlfriend's husband, Indigo Slam shapes up into the most entertaining and exciting American crime novel for years.
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L.A. Requiem (Elvis Cole[8])
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L.A. Requiem
A reckoning has come to the City of Angels… Karen Garcia is missing and her father doesn't trust the cops he wants someone he knows on the case so he enlists the help of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. It seems that Karen is the latest victim of a distinctive serial killer and the police are determined to pin her death, and four others, on the witness who found her body. Cole doesn't believe the man has the guts to murder, and with his partner and the police at each other's throats, it's down to him to find the connection that will reveal the killer. But nailing the murderer means choosing between the two people he cares most about…
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Los Ángeles requiem
A Joe Pike le parece imposible empezar de cero en la ciudad de Los Ángeles, donde los fantasmas del pasado se ocultan tras las luces de neón. Sus días como policía siguen ensombreciendo su presente e influyendo en su actividad como investigador privado. Su única relación estable es la que mantiene con su socio, Elvis Cole, un perspicaz detective con su propio pasado oscuro. Cuando una antigua amante de Pike aparece asesinada en las colinas de Hollywood, Joe y Elvis inician, a instancias del padre de la victima, una investigación paralela a la policía, lo que levantará las suspicacias de los antiguos compañeros de Pike y acabará por enturbiar el asunto hasta límites insospechados.
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Lullaby Town
Peter Alan Nelsen is a super successful movie director who is used to getting what he wants. And what he wants is to find the wife and infant child he dumped on the road to fame. It's the kind of case that Cole could handle in his sleep, except that when Cole actually finds Nelsen's ex wife, everything takes on nightmarish proportions a nightmare which involves Cole with a nasty New York mob family and a psychokiller who is the son of the godfather. When the unpredictable Nelsen charges in, an explosive situation blows sky high.
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Stalking the Angel (Elvis Cole[2])
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Stalking The Angel
Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable, something that belonged to someone else: a rare thirteenth century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure. Everything PI Elvis Cole knew about Japanese culture he'd learned from reading Shogun, but he knew a lot of crooks and what he didn't know, his sociopathic sidekick Joe Pike did. Together their search begins in LA's Little Tokyo and the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the yakuza, and leads to a white knuckled adventure filled with madness, murder and sexual obsession just another day's work for Elvis Cole.
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Sunset Express
When a wealthy L.A. restaurateur is accused of murdering his wife, his attorney hires Elvis Cole to find proof that police detective Angela Rossi fooled around with the evidence. As Elvis investigates, he becomes more suspicious of the lawyers than the cops.
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Suspect
The explosive new masterpiece of suspense from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.LAPD cop Scott James is not doing so well. Eight months ago, a shocking nighttime assault by unidentified men killed his partner Stephanie, nearly killed him, and left him enraged, ashamed, and ready to explode. He is unfit for duty—until he meets his new partner.Maggie is not doing so well, either. A German shepherd who survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing explosives before losing her handler to an IED, her PTSD is as bad as Scott’s.They are each other’s last chance. Shunned and shunted to the side, they set out to investigate the one case that no one wants them to touch: the identity of the men who murdered Stephanie. What they begin to find is nothing like what Scott has been told, and the journey will take them both through the darkest moments of their own personal hells. Whether they will make it out again, no one can say.Praise for SUSPECT“The most multifaceted and appealing new protagonist in crime fiction this year just may turn out to be a dog—and a hard-boiled dog, to boot… A read-in-one-sitting thriller.”—Booklist (starred review)Praise for Robert Crais“Robert Crais is hands-down the World’s Greatest Crime Fiction Writer, and that’s no joke.”—Huffington Post“Most crime novel fans have a shortlist of authors they will buy on name recognition alone. If Robert Crais isn’t on that list, he should be. His novels get better with every new book.”—Portland OregonianAbout the AuthorRobert Crais is the author of many New York Times bestsellers, most recently Taken, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Sentry. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Taken (Elvis Cole[13])
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The First Rule
The organized criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union are bound by what they call the thieves' code. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. He must have no family – no wife, no children. We are his family. If any of the rules are broken, it is punishable by death.Frank Meyer had the American dream – until the day a professional crew invaded his home and murdered everyone inside. The only thing out of the ordinary about Meyer was that – before the family and the business and the normal life – a younger Frank Meyer had worked as a professional mercenary, with a man named Joe Pike. The police think Meyer was hiding something very bad, but Pike does not. With the help of Cole, he sets out on a hunt of his own – an investigation that quickly entangles them both in a web of ancient grudges, blood ties, blackmail, vengeance, double crosses, and cutthroat criminality, and at the heart of it, an act so terrible even Pike and Cole have no way to measure it. Sometimes, the past is never dead. It's not even past.
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The First Rule (Joe Pike[2])
The organized criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union are bound by what they call the thieves' code. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. He must have no family – no wife, no children. We are his family. If any of the rules are broken, it is punishable by death.Frank Meyer had the American dream – until the day a professional crew invaded his home and murdered everyone inside. The only thing out of the ordinary about Meyer was that – before the family and the business and the normal life – a younger Frank Meyer had worked as a professional mercenary, with a man named Joe Pike. The police think Meyer was hiding something very bad, but Pike does not. With the help of Cole, he sets out on a hunt of his own – an investigation that quickly entangles them both in a web of ancient grudges, blood ties, blackmail, vengeance, double crosses, and cutthroat criminality, and at the heart of it, an act so terrible even Pike and Cole have no way to measure it. Sometimes, the past is never dead. It's not even past.
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The Forgotten Man
Crais's latest L.A.-based crime novel featuring super-sleuth Elvis Cole blends high-powered action, a commanding cast and a touch of dark humor to excellent dramatic effect. One morning at four, Cole gets a call from the LAPD informing him that a murdered John Doe has claimed, with his dying breath, to be Cole's father, a man Cole has never met. Cole immediately gets to work gathering evidence on the dead man – Herbert Faustina, aka George Reinnike – while cramping the style of the assigned detective, Jeff Pardy. Though Cole finds Reinnike's motel room key at the crime scene, the puzzle pieces are tough to put together, even with the unfailing help of partner Joe Pike and feisty ex-Bomb Squad techie Carol Starkey, who's so smitten with Cole that she can't think of him without smiling. Days of smart sleuthing work take the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective" from a Venice Beach escort service to the California desert, then a hospital in San Diego, where doubts about Reinnike's true heritage begin to dissipate. Meanwhile, a delusional psychopath named Frederick Conrad, who is convinced that his partner in crime was killed by Cole, stalks and schemes to even the score. There's lots to digest, but this character-driven series continues to be strong in plot, action and pacing, and Crais (The Last Detective) boasts a distinctive knack for a sucker-punch element of surprise.
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The Last Detective
Elvis Cole is once again coming to terms with his life as a PI on the streets of LA. He loves his girlfriend, Lucy Chenier, but his constant exposure to the Californian underclasses has stretched their relationship to the limit especially when Cole's job brings danger too close to her beloved son. The young boy, Ben, is rapidly becoming the light in both their lives. Then one sunny afternoon, the demons from Elvis's past finally come to visit. Ben is snatched from Cole's secluded home. The kidnappers call. They don't want money. They only want retribution. But who from his past is capable of such a crime? The only clue is that the kidnappers mention the words 'five two'. Five two was his unit designation in Vietnam a life he has avoided thinking about for over twenty years. But now he must embark on a journey into his own past to try to protect his future. For it seems that this kidnapper is not only someone who knows him, but someone who owes him.
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