Rating: 
Summary: More Elvis, More kids...more good stuff
Review: Elvis is back. As I work my way through the Cole series, I see Crais and Elvis both growing. I like how see we the evolution of both and the growing of Lucy. A good story, with some geniune surprises. You might be able to figure out a couple, but Crais will surprise you with the others. Elvis is always out to help kids and does it again...I wonder...why? What is Elvis dealing with in his past? Well, I have three more novels to go (up to THe Forgotten Man), so maybe I will find out. Counterfeiting details are good, if not a bit dry, but another solid Pike-Cole novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Elvis, the Family Man!
Review: Elvis, the Family Man!If you have yet to begin the marvelous Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais, you've got a great treat ahead of you! Few series get off to a stronger start than Mr. Crais did with The Monkey's Raincoat, which won both the Anthony and Macavity awards for best novel while being nominated for the Edgar and Shamus awards as well. Stalking the Angel followed powerfully with classic noir style of the 1930s hard-boiled detective up against evil moderated with wise cracks. Lullaby Town updated the 1930s detective stories about Hollywood, and kept the same cynicism about Tinsel Town. Free Fall looked hard at the corruptibility of the police and found them wanting. Voodoo River added a love interest for Elvis to make him more vulnerable and appealing. Sunset Express showed us the crooked side of criminal defense work in a style like Chinatown. And the books just keep getting better from there in their characterizations, action, story-telling and excitement. Elvis Cole is the star attraction, the co-owner of The Elvis Cole Detective Agency. He's now 40ish, ex-Army, served in Vietnam, ex-security guard, has two years of college, learned to be a detective by working under George Feider, a licensed P.I. for over 40 years, does martial arts as enthusiastically as most people do lunch, and is fearless but not foolish. He's out to right the wrongs of the world as much as he is to earn a living. Elvis has a thing for Disney characters (including a Pinocchio clock), kids, cats, scared clients and rapid fire repartee. He drives a Jamaica yellow 1966 Corvette Stingray convertible, and usually carries a Dan Wesson .38 Special. His main foil is partner, Joe Pike, an ex-Marine, ex-cop who moves quietly and mysteriously wearing shades even in the dark . . . when he's not scaring the bad guys with the red arrows tattooed on his deltoids, which are usually bare in sleeveless shirts. Although he has an office with Elvis, Pike spends all of his time at his gun shop when not routing the bad guys with martial arts while carrying and often using enough firepower to stop a tank. Pike rarely speaks . . . and never smiles. A standing gag is trying to catch Pike with a little twitch of his lips indicating he might possibly be amused. But he's there when you need him. He drives a spotless red Jeep. Robert Parker's Spenser is the obvious character parallel for Elvis, but Spenser and Elvis are different in some ways. Cole is more solitary, usually being alone when he's not working. Cole is very much L.A. and Spenser is ultra blue collar Boston. Cole is martial arts while Spenser boxes and jogs. What they have in common is that they're both out to do the right thing, with money being unimportant. They both love to crack wise as they take on the bad guys. The bad guys hate the "humor" in both cases, and can?t do much about it. The dialogue written for each is intensely rich. Mr. Crais has a special talent for making you care about his characters, especially the clients and their kids. You'll want to know what happens to them. With a lot of experience in script writing, Mr. Crais also knows how to set the scene physically and make you feel it. He may be out finest fiction writer about physical movement. He gives you all the clues to picture what's going on . . . but draws back from giving so much detail that you can't use your own imagination to make things better. On to Indigo Slam, the seventh book in the series. The title refers to using an unusual ploy to capture an important advantage. The book opens with a moving prologue in which a father and his three children enter the Federal witness protection program in a terrifying way. Three years later, Teresa (Teri) Haines, 15, and her brother Charles, 12, and their sister Winona, 9, arrive at Elvis's office to hire him to find their father, a printer, who has been gone for eleven days. He does this every so often. Their mother is dead. Elvis isn't sure whether to turn them in to Children's Services or to forget the whole thing. He decides to follow them, as Teri drives off in a Saturn. He finds them in good shape, and decides to look for their father instead. In a parallel thread, attorney Lucy Chenier, Elvis's love, arrives in Los Angeles to follow up on an opportunity to become a legal reporter for television station KROK. Elvis presses her into helping with the new clients. In the meantime, something goes wrong with her negotiations and Elvis has to detect what the problem is. The specter of her former husband's opposition to her moving to Los Angeles looms large over Lucy and Elvis by story's end. The book is really a short story followed by three novellas that are connected by a common set of characters. The first novella focuses on finding Mr. Haines. The second novella looks into what he has been doing while he was away. The third novella is about solving the problems that face the family. In true Crais fashion, the final novella is filled with intense, violent action that will keep you turning pages as rapidly as you can read. I especially love the local color from Southern California in this book. If you have ever been to Disneyland, you will find the sequence there to be a remarkably interesting and rewarding one from that perspective. The book's theme is about what love is and how to express it while under fire. I thought that this was Mr. Crais's most tender and touching novel. Donald Mitchell
Co-author of The 2,000 Percent Solution, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage
Rating: 
Summary: A Quick Entertaining Read
Review: Fifteen-year-old Teri Hewitt and her twelve-year-old brother andnine-year-old sister show up one day at the office of Elvis Cole(private investigator) to ask him to take their case. Their fatherhas disappeared days ago and the children are living by themselveswith Teri playing the role of parent. Elvis is reluctant to take thecase, he would rather call child services.... But he agrees to look into it. What he findsout about their father, Clark Hewitt, is more than he bargained for..... Murders, shoot-outs, abductions,and even an exhilarating chase through Disneyland happen before thisstory concludes.Crais is certainly not going to win any awardshere. He has a simple cookie cutter style of writing such as one whowrites a made for TV movie script would have. He attempts to usehumor in his book, and while I credit him with the effort, I don'tthink he has a flair for comedy. Despite the following observations,I did find the story to be entertaining. I usually prefer classicliterature, or modern day top-notch thriller authors. However, it canbe nice to have a break from heavy reading to pick up a simpleeasy-to-read in a day novel, which Indigo Slam is. I understand thatthe writing of Crais has improved and many readers have recommendedhis newer novel L.A. Requiem. I certainly am not going to rule outCrais on the basis of reading this book alone.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best, not the worst
Review: Finally got to this one in the Elvis Cole series; although I do not know why it was passed over both by starting with Voodoo River, then recent entries and finally jumping on the back trail, a familiar process when I discover an intersting writer. This leads to treasures but also disappointments. This novel is neither. It has a solid plot, although I think one of the final twists is really unnecessary for the conclusion and may be a gratuitous slap at Feds. Pike is simply too shadowy and it is clear that Lucy's ex-husband is being set up for a role in a sequel. As ususal Crais has a strong sense of place, smooth construction and an eventful plot. I rather like some of the wit and joking of Cole and enjoy his irreverent attitude, but I do think the writer pushes it just a bit. The novel does not get bogged down in the technicalities of detecting, lawyering, or policing - a problem in many "thrillers" today. All in all, a good read for a rainy Sunday.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced, fun book.
Review: For Elvis Cole it looks like an easy case. Three kids walk into his office and want to hire him to find their missing father. Before it's over Cole is up to his neck in the Russian mafia, Vietnamese patriots, the Federal witness protection program, and a "funny money" scheme. The book is well plotted and moves along nicely, with a few unexpected twists and turns. Cole is his usualy wise-cracking self and Joe Pitt is as quiet and grim as ever. I've read all of Mr. Crais' novels and I don't know if this is better than the rest, but it's just as good. These guys always remind me of Robert Parker's Spenser and Hawk characters with their byplay. All in all a good book.
Rating:
Summary: You can't go wrong with Elvis
Review: For me, the mystery of Indigo Slam is why it was out of print for years. Originally published in 1997, it didn't come out in paperback till 2003 (and the hardcover disappeared), while other later Crais novels (including another Cole book) did the usual hardcover-to-paperback cycle and remained on the shelves. Whatever the reason, it's here now and it's really good. Elvis Cole, self-proclaimed World's Greatest Detective, is hired by three children to find their father. Motivated more by conscience than money, he helps them. When it turns out that the father is on the run from the Russian mob, Elvis starts getting in over his head. Fortunately, there is his laconic partner Pike to watch his back. Mystery fans will see a certain similarity between the Cole books and Robert Parker's Spenser. Both feature wise-cracking tough private eyes with mysterious but generally good-hearted partners. Unfortunately, over the years, I found Spenser getting unlikably smug and self-righteous, while Cole remains a pleasure to read about. And both Cole and Pike are much more well-developed than either Spenser or Hawk, neither of whom even reveal their full names (the single-named hero is a bit of a tired gimmick nowadays...Richard Stark's Parker is forgiven because he's been around since the mid-60's). You don't need to have read other Elvis Cole novels to get into this one; Crais makes it easy to get right into things. For fans of the private-eye novel, you'll find this - like all the other novels by Crais - delightfully entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Great Noir Style
Review: I have purchased many Robert Crais novels and finally got a chance to start reading some of them. I could almost kick myself for waiting this long. Crais has a great detective noir style similiar to Spillane and Hammett. However in this story the client is not a woman looking for her husband, but a group of young children looking for their lost father. Crais' main character P.I. Elvis Cole takes on the case to find the missing father. He figures it will be a quick easy job not knowing what is in store for him. The kids claim that the father is gone looking for a new printing job. However Cole finds out that the father is not what the kids claim. The journey takes Cole on a wild trip with encounters with drug dealers, Russian mobsters, Vietanesse rebels, and crooked U.S. Marshals. The story also ends up in Disneyland a great place to end a story with three kids. Crais is a pure joy in this novel. His characters of Cole and partner Pike are closely related to Robert Pearker's Spencer and Hawk. The kids are very well written, and all three are different instead of cardboard cutouts, which is how most kids get portrayed in this genre. I highly recommend this one and look forward to much more.
Rating:
Summary: Good - but not really good
Review: I like parts of this book, but overall I rate it as one of the lower books in the series. Still with its good points its a descent read, worthy of being checked out at the library. And since its outta print thats probably what you'll have to do. But if you're a faithful reader of this series then I would definitly read this. I read the whole series in a week so its not going to take up to much of your time, but let me know what you think. Reccommended to the faithful.
Rating:
Summary: Good BOT
Review: I liked this BOT (book on tape.) The only negetive thing I have to say is that the format of using 2 tracks per side (1 on right side and 1 on the left side of stereo) has some draw backs. but the price savings of this feature are nice.
Rating: 
Summary: A real disappointment -- save your money
Review: I've enjoyed the Elvis Cole series but this was indeed a sub-subpar effort. Even for what is expected to be a "light read," there was nothing remotely credible about the plot or the characters. Improbable, unlikely -- the willing suspension of disbelief can only be stretched so thin. The bit about the mysterious klling machine partner (Pike) who always shows up at the right time is also getting tedious and makes Harvey the six-foot rabbit seemed grounded in reality. Let's face it -- characters like Pike and Hawk (in the Spenser series) are as pathetic fantasies as anything found in some bodice-ripping romance novel. Buy Michael Connelly's latest (or any book of his) rather than this book. For real writing, emotion and character development there is just no comparison.
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