Bound in publisher's original paper over boards. Spine stamped in gilt. From the library of Howard Block, cousin of Lawrence Block.

Select Editions: The Geneva Deception; Major Pettigrew's Last Stand; The First Rule; Hannah's Choice

Crais, Robert

PUTNAM

Life in the California sun suits Elvis Cole--until the day a fifteen-year-old girl and her two younger siblings walk into his office. Then everything changes. Three years ago, a Seattle family ran for their lives in a hail of bullets. Hired by three kids to find their missing father, Elvis now must pick up the cold pieces of a drama that began that night. What he finds is a sordid tale of high crimes and illicit drugs. As clues to a man's secret life emerge from the shadows, Elvis knows he's not just up against ruthless mobsters and some very angry Feds. He's facing a storm of desperation and conspiracy--bearing down on three children whose only crime was their survival...

Indigo Slam (Elvis Cole)

Literature & Fiction

United States

Hyperion-Acquired Assets

“Terrific entertainment . . . A powerful portrait of Los Angeles in our time: swift, colorful, gripping, a real knockout.”—Dean Koontz The day starts like any other in L.A. The sun burns hot as the Santa Ana winds blow ash from mountain fires to coat the glittering city. But for private investigator Joe Pike, the city will never be the same again. His ex-lover, Karen Garcia, is dead, brutally murdered with a gun shot to the head. Now Karen's powerful father calls on Pike (a former cop) and his partner, Elvis Cole, to keep an eye on the LAPD as they search for his daughter's killer--because in the luminous City of Angels, everyone has secrets, and even the mighty blue have something to hide. But what starts as a little procedural hand-holding turns into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. For a dark web of conspiracy threatens to destroy Pike and Cole's twelve-year friendship—if not their lives. And L.A. just might be singing their dirge. Praise for L.A. Requiem “One of the best crime novels I've ever read. Absolutely terrific!”—David Baldacci “Darker, denser, deeper, and more satisfying than anything he’s written before.”—The Denver Post “[A] whodunit with salsa and soul . . . [Crais] keeps his plot pounding along.”—People

L. A. Requiem (Elvis Cole)

Ballantine Books

Demolition Angel: A Novel

“Crais is at the top of his game, and Demolition Angel delivers the goods. With a bang. . . . It’s Silence of the Lambs meets Speed. . . . Crais knows how to press all the right buttons in keeping the story line taut and the action, well, explosive.”—San Francisco Chronicle Carol Starkey is struggling to pick up the pieces of her former life as L.A.’s finest bomb squad technician. Fueled with liberal doses of alcohol and Tagamet, she’s doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD’s Criminal Conspiracy Section. Three years have passed since the event that still haunts her: a detonation that killed her partner and lover, scarred her body and soul, and ended her career as a bomb tech. When a seemingly innocuous bomb call explodes into a charred murder scene, Carol catches the case and embarks on an investigation of a series of explosions that reveal chilling intentions. The bombs are designed expressly to kill bomb technicians. Now, as the one tech who survived the deadliest of blasts, Carol is in for the most perilous fight of her life. . . . Praise for Demolition Angel “Terrific . . . explosive . . . [a] high powered thrill ride.”—The Wall Street Journal “Gripping . . . Crais piles on plot twists . . . gathering the separate threads at the end and igniting them like a string of fireworks.”—People “A powerful, self-contained novel of suspense that has the compactness, velocity, and effectiveness of a well-aimed bullet . . . This is a thriller that works on every level, a pivotal work from a crime novelist operating at the top of his game.”—Los Angeles Times “Fascinating and frighteningly believable . . . Starkey is one of the toughest characters to grace the crowded field of thriller books in a long time.”—USA Today “A flammable techno-thriller with the kind of force that knocks out windows.”—The New York Times Book Review "Packs an explosive punch. Though the pace of the book moves like a quick-burning fuse, Crais still takes the time in Demolition Angel to sketch out some memorable characters: Starkey, haunted and hollow-eyed, covering up her pain with a Bogart-tough demeanor; and John Michael Fowles (aka Mr. Red), a sociopath who gets all sorts of information from the Internet without breaking a sweat. . . . Crais keeps things wound so tight that readers will be getting paper cuts in their rush to finish this one.”—The Denver Post

Hostage: A Novel

The bestselling author of Demolition Angeland L.A. Requiemreturns with his most intense and intricate thriller yet. As the Los Angeles Times said, Robert Crais is “a crime writer operating at the top of his game.” His complex heroes and heroines, his mastery of noir atmosphere, and his brilliant, taut plots have catapulted him into the front rank of a new breed of thriller writers. Hostageproves his earlier success was no fluke. It’s an unstoppable read. An ex-con with delusions of grandeur and his tagalong brother unwittingly team up with a psychopath one wrong word away from meltdown. When their late afternoon joyride turns into a random act of violence, they take a family hostage in the affluent bedroom community of Bristo Camino. Enter Chief of Police Jeff Talley, a stressed-out former LAPD SWAT negotiator who is hiding from his past. Plunged back into the high-pressure world that he desperately wants to forget, Talley soon learns that his nightmare has only begun. The hostages are not who they seem, and the home contains secrets that even L.A.’s most lethal and volatile crime lord, Sonny Benza, fears. As Talley tries to hold himself together and save the people inside, the full weight of Benza’s wrath descends on him, putting the police chief and his own family at risk. Soon, all involved are held hostage by the exigencies of fate and the only one capable of diffusing the standoff is the least stable of them all. Hostage is a blistering stand-alone thriller with superb characters in crisis, multistranded plotting, and pitch-perfect Southern California sensibility.

Fawcett

Life in the California sun suits Elvis Cole—until the day a fifteen-year-old girl and her two younger siblings walk into his office. Then everything changes. Three years ago, a Seattle family ran for their lives in a hail of bullets. Hired by three kids to find their missing father, Elvis now must pick up the cold pieces of a drama that began that night. What he finds is a sordid tale of high crimes and illicit drugs. As clues to a man’s secret life emerge from the shadows, Elvis knows he’s not just up against ruthless mobsters and some very angry Feds. He’s facing a storm of desperation and conspiracy—bearing down on three children whose only crime was their survival. . . .

Indigo Slam (The Elvis Cole)

Classics

DEMOLITION ANGEL.

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

DOUBLEDAY. NY 2000

“Stunning . . . Shrewdly written and sharply plotted . . . The Last Detective is a rare treat.”—The Washington Post Book World “Fast-moving . . . a page-turning thriller.”—Chicago Tribune P.I. Elvis Cole’s relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained, but it becomes even more tense when the unthinkable happens: While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, the boy vanishes without a trace. When the kidnappers call, it’s not for ransom, but for a promise to punish Cole for past sins he claims he didn’t commit. With LAPD wrestling over the case and the boy’s estranged father attempting to take control of the investigation, Cole vows to find Ben first. But Cole’s partner, Joe Pike, knows more about this case than he has said. Pike lives in a world where dangerous men commit crimes beyond all reckoning. Now, one of those men is alive and well in L.A.—and calling Elvis Cole to war.

The Last Detective

Contemporary

With his acclaimed bestsellers, Hostage and Demolition Angel, Robert Crais drew raves for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations, and cinematic prose. Now, Crais returns to his signature character, Los Angeles private investigator Elvis Cole, in a masterful page-turner that probes the meaning of family and the burdens of the past. Elvis Cole is back... Elvis Cole's relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained. When she moved from Louisiana to join Elvis in Los Angeles, she never dreamed that violence would so easily touch her life—but then the unthinkable happens. While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, Ben disappears without a trace. Desperate to believe that the boy has run away, evidence soon mounts to suggest a much darker scenario. Joining forces with his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, Elvis frantically searches for Ben with the help of LAPD Detective Carol Starkey, as Lucy's wealthy, oil-industry ex-husband attempts to wrest control of the investigation. Amid the maelstrom of personal conflicts, Elvis and Joe are forced to consider a more troubling lead—one indicating that Ben's disappearance is connected to a terrible, long-held secret from Elvis Cole's past. Venturing deep inside a complex psyche, Crais explores Elvis's need for family—the military that embraced him during a troubled adolescence, his rock-solid partnership with Pike, and his floundering relationship with Lucy—as they race the clock in their search for Ben. The Last Detective is Robert Crais' richest, most intense tale of suspense yet.

The Forgotten Man (Elvis Cole)

Prominent restaurateur Teddy Martin is facing charges in his wife’s brutal murder. But he’s not going down without spending a bundle of cash on his defense. So his hotshot attorney hires P.I. Elvis Cole to find proof that Detective Angela Rossi tampered with the evidence. Rossi needs a way back to the fast track after falling hard during an internal investigation five years ago. But Cole needs to know if she’s desperate enough to falsify the case against Martin in order to secure her own position. As Cole and his partner Joe Pike work their way through a tangle of witnesses and an even greater tangle of media, they begin to suspect that it’s not the police who are behind the setup.

Sunset Express (Elvis Cole)

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