This is another one of the action/mystery novels by Crais, set in Los Angeles and featuring the main characters Joe Pike and Elvis Cole. Pike is a former Marine, ex-cop, occasional mercenary, and sometimes PI and troubleshooter working with Cole, a private investigator. Pike is stoic, deadly, and taciturn. Cole is garrulous, glib, and tough. The Watchman is primarily a Joe Pike novel, though it does feature Cole and several other characters, like police forensics specialist John Chen, as point of view characters.
In this novel, Pike has to repay a favor from a previous novel and accept a job protecting a spoiled rich girl who caused an auto accident that allowed her to see the face of a dangerous man wanted by the federal authorities. Attempts on her life soon follow, and continue even after Pike is assigned to protect her. But seeing as Pike is not really a bodyguard at heart, he decides that the best strategy is to hunt down the people who are pursuing the girl.
Crais does an excellent job here keeping the events moving at a brisk pace. There aren't that many surprises in terms of the plot: a few twists that don't really knock you off your feet. But the twists and turns do seem to hold up well. Pike does some very dangerous things, but he does them in a very methodical, pragmatic fashion. By surrounding Pike with other characters who are more talkative, neurotic, and witty, Crais both makes Pike's oddness stand out and shows that he can write a variety of characters.
The best part of the story is what it reveals, bit by bit, about Pike's personality and that of Larkin Barkeley, the rich girl he is protecting. Crais takes a character who, on the surface, I've seen in dozens of action movies: the close-lipped badass who you don't want to cross. But he injects him with vulnerabilities, based on Pike's own past as an abused child and his present inability to really connect to most people. This is a guy who, for all his confidence in a crisis situation, is most comfortable when he's silent and unseen. He moves through the world around him almost like a ghost, and there's a sadness to his self-imposed isolation.
It feels as though Crais thought carefully about what kinds of life experiences and mindset would be necessary to create a guy capable of the sorts of action-film deadliness that Pike emanates, and then decided to show what that sort of person would be like in and out of battle. He's not the first person to take this approach; in many ways Pike is an archetypal Warrior, the one who protects the village but cannot truly be part of it. But Crais manages to present Pike with a simple and direct style that feels effortless on the page. I find it well-crafted and an enjoyable read.
Showing posts with label robert crais. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robert crais. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Review: LA Requiem, The Two Minute Rule
Recently finished LA Requiem and The Two Minute Rule by Robert Crais. One's an interesting modern take on the hard-boiled private eye genre, the other's a fast-paced page turner about a former bank robber who gets out of jail only to find that his estranged police officer son has been murdered.
In Sum: Both novels are well written. The parts that I saw coming felt right, the author developed some of the main characters in surprising ways, and he had some good twists here and there. Nicely crafted stories that were enjoyable reads.
LA Requiem has a character named Joe Pike who is one of those quasi-superhuman ex-military guys who show up all too often in action fiction. He wears sunglasses all the time, he's extremely fit for his age, he's taciturn, he's a killing machine, he's incredibly stealthy, and he has uncanny powers of observation when it comes to tracking and finding clues. He'd be completely unbearable if he was the main character or if Crais didn't go to the trouble of showing us how lonely Pike's life is and how he's alienated so many of the people around him over the years.
The narrator is a guy named Elvis who is more flawed, though still competent, and easier to like. There's a surrounding cast of characters who are generally interesting, including the LA private eye genre staples of incompetent brown nosing police detective, rich guy with political pull who hires the PIs, and the honest cop who helps the PI protagonist even when doing so might amount to career suicide. In this case, the honest cop is an attractive woman. So while it isn't earth-shattering, it reads a lot like a well-done movie.
The Two-Minute Rule is more original. The main character is flawed but not so much that you find him creepy or pathetic, and you sympathize with his desire to learn why his son, who he remembers as a little boy that he let down, was murdered. And it has a great character in a middle-aged former FBI bank crimes investigator who is struggling as a single mom following her retirement and who proves to be all too eager to get back into the thrill of tracking down felons, as the murders are tied to a big bank heist carried out, ironically, not by a brilliant gang but by two steroid-inflated morons. The main characters are honest about their own flaws and not so caught up in their own little worlds that they can't see the strengths and foibles of those around them. A good story with a couple twists and a satisfying yet generally believable resolution.
In Sum: Both novels are well written. The parts that I saw coming felt right, the author developed some of the main characters in surprising ways, and he had some good twists here and there. Nicely crafted stories that were enjoyable reads.
LA Requiem has a character named Joe Pike who is one of those quasi-superhuman ex-military guys who show up all too often in action fiction. He wears sunglasses all the time, he's extremely fit for his age, he's taciturn, he's a killing machine, he's incredibly stealthy, and he has uncanny powers of observation when it comes to tracking and finding clues. He'd be completely unbearable if he was the main character or if Crais didn't go to the trouble of showing us how lonely Pike's life is and how he's alienated so many of the people around him over the years.
The narrator is a guy named Elvis who is more flawed, though still competent, and easier to like. There's a surrounding cast of characters who are generally interesting, including the LA private eye genre staples of incompetent brown nosing police detective, rich guy with political pull who hires the PIs, and the honest cop who helps the PI protagonist even when doing so might amount to career suicide. In this case, the honest cop is an attractive woman. So while it isn't earth-shattering, it reads a lot like a well-done movie.
The Two-Minute Rule is more original. The main character is flawed but not so much that you find him creepy or pathetic, and you sympathize with his desire to learn why his son, who he remembers as a little boy that he let down, was murdered. And it has a great character in a middle-aged former FBI bank crimes investigator who is struggling as a single mom following her retirement and who proves to be all too eager to get back into the thrill of tracking down felons, as the murders are tied to a big bank heist carried out, ironically, not by a brilliant gang but by two steroid-inflated morons. The main characters are honest about their own flaws and not so caught up in their own little worlds that they can't see the strengths and foibles of those around them. A good story with a couple twists and a satisfying yet generally believable resolution.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)