This book is the latest in the Elvis Cole novels by Robert Crais; he released it just last month. As a later Elvis Cole novel, it features all the hallmarks of the Cole novels:
- A woman character who falls madly in love with Cole, who is oblivious because
- Cole is pining for Lucy Chenier, and that’s going badly, meanwhile
- He takes a case for personal interest instead of for, you know, pay, because this time it’s personal! which leads to
- A major character getting shot and dying, and another surviving but weakened by the aftermath.
So the book covers all of those bases. It’s readable, and one can overlook certain consistencies with plot amongst the novels and certain, um, non sequitors with the plot of this book. Crais does dial back his use of the third person narrator so that more than half of the book uses the first person voice of Elvis Cole.
When a strange, tattooed man is murdered, his dying words claim that Elvis Cole is his son. Cole, who never knew father, wonders if this is the man and if not, why the dying man would make the claim. So Cole investigates, dredges up some long fallow crimes, and pines for Lucy Chenier.
I am finally done with the series, which is a blessing and a curse; now I have to stand before my bookshelves when I finish a book and pick another one from the hundreds of volumes on my to-read shelves. It was so easy to just resignedly pick up the next Crais novel, and now I am stuck with my indecision.
