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I'm not sure why, but before Chasing Darkness, I hadn't read anything by Robert Crais. I plan to read one of his earlier novels so that I can experience Crais at his best. I gather this is not the best example of the author's work (I have been meaning to read Monkey's Raincoat & LA Requiem - but haven't yet).
For the most part I enjoyed the novel. The solution to this mystery when revealed has a pretty significant hole in its logic and there are some annoying unresolved issues that seem to have been forgotten by the author.All in all, I found Chasing Darkness to be a quick, entertaining read. I read a fair amount of crime fiction and Crais is one of the better known authors in the genre so it is strange that I hadn't read anything by him.
I may not be a regular reader of the author, but even I can tell that Crais is just going through the motions here. I liked the Elvis Cole character and I appreciated that this PI actually does a reasonable amount of detecting. I find that a lot of the time the PI's in this type of novel tend to stumble onto the solution of a crime rather than actually solving anything.
It's not great, but an enjoyable diversion. Even so, based on this effort and even if he is underperforming here (which I assume he is) he's still an author worth reading.
Well I for one think this latest novel, Chasing Darkness, is a giant step back in the right direction. There seems to be a common thread in the opinions about Crais's Elvis Cole novels; and that is that Cole and his pal, Joe Pike, have lost something since the early novels. Less swagger, not so in-your-face, whatever. Cole seems to have put on his Monkey's Raincoat in this one. Well worth the read.
Every part of the plot is excellent. You won't have any inklings who is the bad guy. You'll know for sure since the beginning who's not the bad guy. But at the end the book's plot is missing something big time.
When the killer is finally revealed in the book's last pages, it's a shocker.It's a classic sleuth novel where Cole does the kind of grunt, door-to-door dectective work that breaks open real life cases. Robert Crais is one of my fav authors. In Chasing Darkness, Elvis is stunned to learn the man he proved innocent of killing a young woman may have been guilty. To solve the case they must cut though a web of corruption and heavy-duty LAPD politics. I'm not happy with Crais' recent trend to give us less of Pike. In fact, he may have killed more young women.
This is a more tempered Elvis Cole.Carol Starkey was in the novel and I would've liked to have seen more of her. He can weave a spell binding suspense that keeps you turning pages. As in his more recent novels in the series, Crais has Elvis leaving behind his high-jinx, wise-cracking days. Cole thinks his original investigation was sound. He and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike set off to find out who the real killer is. I definitely would like to see more Joe Pike.
I was happy to see Lucy fading from the picture, though I do miss her son.
Comedy is tough to write, but Robert Crais used to be the master of comedic detectives in his early Elvis Cole books. That humor has become less prevalent as the series has gotten older, and while the humor and laughs I used to get from the Cole series are missed, Crais still delivers a top-notch mystery. This is a pretty straightforward detective novel, but the quirkiness of Joe Pike and an overall good plot carry this effort. I don't like the brooding Elvis Cole as much as I liked the fast-talking funny version, but I'll be back for more.Recommended, but look elsewhere for some laughs.
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