L.A. Requiem

Rating:
Summary: This author can write!
Review: I only recently found Robert Crais, but I am making up for lost time by reading everything he has written. L.A. Requiem is so well written, so well paced, that it is difficult to put down. I have found this to be true with all of Crais's Elvis Cole books. Cole is a private investigator, and he is as likeable a leading character as you will find, as is his partner, Joe Pike. Fascinating characters, great suspense, and surprises that keep me riveted have made me a true fan.

Rating:
Summary: HIS BEST YET
Review: Having read each of the Elvis Cole novels as they appeared, Ifeel that I can make a fair assesment of this entry. It is far aboveany of the other very well done works! Even though the love scenes area bit sappy, the story and character developement show a maturity inCrais that faithful readers witnessed developing over the past fewyears. At first Cole seemed no more than a pale Spencer clone. Now,Cole has claimed his own place in the private -eye genere. And, alofty place it is. Fun, fast moving plot, and characters you careabout are what you discover between these covers."L. A. Reqiuem" could possibly stand for Less AdroitRequiem, because it will be hard to settle for less after this.

Rating:
Summary: A good series in obvious decline
Review: Before we begin, let me first say that this book got almost uniformly rave reviews from every media source I could find. So it is entirely possible that you should dismiss what follows as the crotchety grousings of an ornery old man, but I thought the book, while peopled with likable heroes and displaying Crais's steady hand at dialogue, was a predictable, cliche-ridden, mistake.

Before we go any further, it would be helpfully if you peruse my review of the first book in the Elvis Cole series, The Monkey's Raincoat (Grade : B+). As you can see, I've had reservations about the series from the beginning, indeed about the direction of the hard-boiled genre generally, and several of those concerns come to a head here. In this eighth entry in the series, Robert Crais moves Joe Pike off of the periphery and places him near the center of the story. When an old girlfriend is missing, Joe asks Elvis, the first favor he's ever asked, to help him find her. The girl's wealthy Hispanic businessman father wants them to keep an eye on the police investigation because he's concerned that the cops aren't taking the matter seriously. When the case turns into a murder investigation, the father uses his pull with Hispanic City Councilmen to get Elvis loosely attached to the official police detail, much to their resentment, which is only compounded by the fact that Joe Pike is Elvis's partner.

Here the Pike story moves to the forefront as Crais fills in the details of his mysterious past. It turns out that Pike left the police force after killing his own partner in the midst of the arrest of a pedophile. Supposedly, the partner, Abel Wozniak, was beating the suspect and Pike intervened; a shot was fired and Wozniak died, shot by his own gun. Complicating the matter was the fact that Internal Affairs was investigating Wozniak's involvement with a burglary ring and Pike's desire, unfulfilled, for Wozniak's wife. Unfortunately for Cole and Pike, the officer in charge of this murder investigation, Harvey Krantz, was also involved in the original Internal Affairs investigation of the shooting, during which Pike humiliated him in spectacular, near career wrecking, fashion. He fobs Cole off on Samantha Dolan, a driven and resentful black sheep of the Robbery-Homicide team who several years before had been the inspiration for a CBS TV series. Krantz effectively freezes Cole out of the case, refusing to share reports with him or passing him doctored ones, and Dolan is uncooperative, both because she feels slighted having to baby-sit Cole and because Krantz continually denigrates her.

Pike and Cole use their own ample resources and unique techniques to develop their own leads on the case and discover that the killing was similar enough to several others that Krantz and his team are secretly treating it as a serial killer case. Not only has this information been kept from them, so has the fact that they've identified a suspect. Then, when the suspect is gunned down, all the evidence points to Pike and Cole has to try to clear his friend and get him out of jail.

As Cole feeds her useful information, Dolan becomes an ally and eventually falls in love with him, much to the consternation of Cole's girlfriend, Lucy Chenier, who has just moved to LA in order to be closer to him. Further complicating their relationship is the fact that Lucy believes Pike may have actually committed the crime and her willingness to make Cole choose between her and Pike.

I'll not reveal any more of the plot because if you're not a mystery reader there's some remote possibility that some of the twists will surprise you. Let me instead discuss some of the general weaknesses with the story. First, and foremost, is the decision to delve into Pike's background and psyche, which only serves to diminish the character. It turns out that Pike's step-father was a brutal drunkard who terrorized and battered Joe and his Mother. In a flashback, Pike recalls one particularly horrific beating and as he hides in the woods vows :

I will make myself strong. I will not hurt. It won't always be this way.

The rest of his life, especially Marine Reconnaissance Patrol Training, is devoted to turning himself into a man who is strong enough never to be hurt physically again. This is all presumably intended to humanize Pike, but what it does is make him seem to be little more than a response to childhood trauma, the product of a formula, and an object of pity. The subplots about his romance with the dead girl and his chaste love for Wozniak's wife, likewise make him seem more tender and vulnerable than he has in prior books and his reliance on Cole over the course of the investigation make him seem almost emotionally dependent. Why? Robert B. Parker has done much the same with Hawk by now, turning him from an amoral force of nature with a bizarre loyalty to Spenser into an insipid cross between Marvin Hagler and Oprah. Both Crais and Spenser have robbed the characters of the air of mystery which made them so interesting to begin with. Where they once seemed like forces of nature, they are now merely slightly tougher versions of the hero of the series. Moreover, the conventions of the genre require the p.i. to finish off the case, so the supposed tough guys end up being saved by the detectives. None of this dilution of the characters makes any sense from a dramatic standpoint, nor are their backgrounds sufficiently interesting on their own to justify sacrificing the aura of enigma they had brought to the tales.

Equally annoying in this book is the off-the-shelf nature of the other characters. Girlfriends and their children exist for nearly the sole purpose of being placed in danger, kind of like the baby in the perambulator in The Untouchables. The bad cop is, of course, the Internal Affairs guy. The serial killer is capable of near flawless planning and commission of a fairly complex revenge plot. And Samantha Dolan's predicament, beautiful and tough but no one takes her seriously, may have been realistic twenty years ago, but in post-Rodney King, post-OJ Los Angeles, a famous female cop who was being treated unfairly by a white male supervisor would merely need to call the L. A. Times and she'd be the next Commissioner. This subplot is badly outdated and fails to understand the true power relationship between the genders and the races in the modern world.

Finally, as a general matter, the book reflects what I think is the single worst trend in the genre, the tendency to make the stories be about the detective, instead of about the case or really about the other characters involved in the case. We've come a long, and not very healthy, way since Dashiell Hammett didn't even bother to give the Continental Op a name (see Orrin's review of Red Harvest) and from the novels of Ross MacDonald, which were fundamentally stories about the crimes at the core of dysfunctional families. Most of the mystery in L. A. Requiem concerns uncovering the real Joe Pike and exploring Elvis's relationship with him. Blech! Spare us.

Robert B. Parker tantalized us several times with glimpses of what the Spenser series could have achieved, in A Savage Place (read Orrin's review) when Spenser went to L.A. on a case without Susan or Hawk, and in the sequence of books during which Susan had abandoned Spenser. Crais has reached a point where it's in the best interest of the Elvis Cole series to ditch Pike and Cole's love interests for a while, maybe send him East for a couple of cases on his own, which would perforce return the focus to case and clients. Unfortunately, the book ends with him voicing his love for L. A. and vowing to rebuild his relationship with Lucy. One fears a slow decline into Hart to Hart and heart-to-heart territory.

GRADE : C

Rating:
Summary: Best book I ever read
Review: This is the best crime fiction available today. I've read all the other Cole books and they are simply the best detective novels ever written. What I especially liked about LA Requiem is that we learn more about Joe Pike, his childhood and when he was in the Army. The humor and how Cole kinda "talks" to the reader is another reason I enjoy the Cole series so much.

I hope we never see any of the Cole books dramatized by Hollywood, because I really can't think of any actors today that can represent the images, settings and people I create in my mind when I read Mr. Crais' books.

Please write more Cole, Mr Crais!

Thanks, Willy

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful and Excruciatingly Tense
Review: Elvis and Joe are at it again. But this time the case hits close to home. Joe's former girlfriend, Karen Garcia, is found murdered. Karen's father, a prominent L.A. businessman, hires Elvis and Joe to supervise the LAPD's investigation, as he has little faith in the police. But the LAPD does not take kindly to the two private investigators interfering with their job. They want Elvis and Joe out of the picture and will do anything to remove them from the case. Meanwhile, a string of other murders eerily similar to Karen Garcia's are taking place. When the police finally name and apprehend their suspect, Elvis and Joe's personal and professional lives are turned upside down. The most unlikely person to commit murder is the prime suspect and the evidence mounts daily to confirm that the party is guilty. As their friendship strains, Elvis and Joe must undertake their most complicated search for the truth. Even if it means facing some inner demons that they did not know existed.

Rating:
Summary: L. A. Requiem
Review: I love this guy! I just picked him out by chance from this years Edgar nominees, and in the last couple of months I read every book he's written. Fast and funny reading.

Rating:
Summary: L.A. Requiem
Review: Absolutely one of the best mystery/crime novels I have ever read. Tremendous characterization of Joe Pike and the L.A. police department. The Detective Elvis Cole is truly an amazing character as well. You simply cannot put this book down!

Rating:
Summary: L.A. Requiem is Chandler 1999 without Chandler
Review: I had never read Crais before so his characters & plots were new to me although the location had the shadows of a Jonathan Kellerman. It also read a lot like an old-fashioned Chandler. I enjoyed the slight exaggeration of the characters, their motives, emotions & lives. Found some gaping holes as it seemed very unrealistic that cops from one jurisdiction could freely operate in every other jurisdiction with little or no interaction. When I'd finished, was I satisfied? For the most part yes! See my full review at [my website].active feature of this book is to guess who has committed all the crimes and the author ingeniously drop some elements to make you think. The big surprise, the culprit. The ending, although a little sloppy does not disappoint and stays in line with the whole story

Rating:
Summary: MORE PLEASE
Review: So many 'guest' reviewers have outlined this story far better than I can. I only discovered Robert Crais through Demolition Angel and have subsequently read every other book - in order over two weeks. The house is a tip - the kids are hungry and I am thrilled. LA Requiem brought us a new dimension in Crais's normal style. Here was a more challenging story line - more thought provoking- than perhaps the others have been. They - 'the others' made me chuckle and sometimes think but I would describe them best as 'holiday reading'. LA Requiem is a readers book - Congratulations Mr Crais and please tell me you are writing another Elvis Cole soon - having discovered you recently I hungry now for more. Better go clean up now........ ahhhhhh

Rating:
Summary: Excellent audio-cassette is right on target!
Review: Robert Crais has created a terrific series detective, Elvis Cole, otherwise known as "World's Greatest," as he's dubbed by police detective Samantha Dolan. (More about her, later.) John Bedford Lloyd has just the right voice for Elvis, Pike, and the other male characters in this story, but falters with the women, especially with Lucy Chenier, Elvis's love interest.

The random killings in Los Angeles that claim an ex-girlfriend of the enigmatic Joe Pike, Elvis's silent (but deadly) partner, brings us Pike's backstory, and we finally find out what happened to make Pike the most despised ex-LAPD uniformed officer in its history. Worth waiting for! A truly vicious killer and an equally nasty detective named Krantz (otherwise known as "Pants") out to get Joe Pike keeps up the high level of suspense.

Ah, yes, Samantha Dolan. In my opinion, a worthier partner for Elvis Cole than the whiny Lucy Chenier. Dolan is strong, smart, and goodlooking, and Elvis IS tempted. I didn't much care for Lucy at all in this one. If you love someone, you trust him. Period. She flunks the test. I hope Crais dumps her and gives Elvis a break; he deserves better than this. (Lloyd's off rendition of her "Scarlett O'Hara voice," as Dolan dubs it, makes her particularly unsympathetic.)

Wonderful tape! Long and delicious.