Rating: 
Summary: All aboard the Sunset Express
Review: Crais does it again. The only reason I give this four and not five stars is I have come to expect so much of Crais that I have set his books for extremely high standards. Elvis Cole has developed the more tender side as his love life grows, but this doesn't take away from the intriguing mystery and the characters themselves. If anything I think these developments make Elvis become more realistic and add to the story. If you have read the previous books don't be worried that this will skip a beat.For any concerned Spenser fans, I'll say that I was a fan of Crais before I picked up a Spenser novel, and I have to admit I was initially blown away by the thought that Elvis Cole and Joe Pike were a reenactment of Spenser and Hawk. After reading this book though I think that while Crais may have been inspired by Spenser's stories, that his books do not fall into the category of imitations. They definitely stand on their own. In other words if you love Spenser then you'll love these books too, for the characters and stories and you will be begging for the next one to come along. I can only guess that this book is not published due to some issue between Crais and the publisher of this book and Indigo Slam. I found my copy at a used book store. It's definitely worth the search. No matter how you find it, pick it up and bring it home.
Rating: 
Summary: Gotta love it when the lawyers feel the heat
Review: From the beginning, you know Elvis is being hired by a sleezy lawyer, who has got rich on high profile criminal defenses. This time, it involves a TV producer, who is accused of murdering his wife. The defense team wants to pin reasonable doubt on a particular LA police detective known for questionable activity in her past. But Elvis, just wants the truth. And you know, with Elvis and Joe Pike, the truth will be found, no matter who gets hurt along the way. Elvis's romance with Lucy Chenier gets re-kindled, as she pays him a visit during some west coast business meetings of hers.
Rating:
Summary: Gotta love it when the lawyers feel the heat
Review: From the beginning, you know Elvis is being hired by a sleezy lawyer, who has got rich on high profile criminal defenses. This time, it involves a TV producer, who is accused of murdering his wife. The defense team wants to pin reasonable doubt on a particular LA police detective known for questionable activity in her past. But Elvis, just wants the truth. And you know, with Elvis and Joe Pike, the truth will be found, no matter who gets hurt along the way. Elvis's romance with Lucy Chenier gets re-kindled, as she pays him a visit during some west coast business meetings of hers.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book. I will read the others.
Review: I ran across this book sort of by accident, but once into it, I couldn't put it down. I have not read this author before, but I like what I read. Crais seems to have the ability to write a tight story that moves from point A to point B at a good pace. The characters are (mostly) fleshed out well, and got me genuinely interested at what would happen to them. Some may complain that this is run of the mill detective stuff - and it certainly has its share of cliches - but who cares? It's a tight story that moves well and keeps you guessing just enough to be interesting. That's exactly what I want from a detective book. Four stars. I will read the other Cole novels.
Rating:
Summary: A VERY LOW FOUR!!!
Review: I rated this a four but really thought about a three. I really like Crais as a writer, I like Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. However, I hate that Elvis has and is involved with Lucy Chenier. In my openion it takes away from the books. It was the same in Voodoo River and now this one. In fact this book was nearly half over before I thought it got down to the business at hand. Cole is hired by a high priced Attorney to find out if Angela Rossi, a detective, planted evidence against his client. Cole not only finds out but proves who did the killing and who actually did fool with the evidence. I liked the character of Angela Rossi and Ray Depente was brought back for a few pages. I hope both of these are in future books but Cole and Lucy together, I can do without. Cole and Pike are compared to Spence and Hawk and I agree but I don't think Hawk would have missed getting the shooter behind the car.
Rating: 
Summary: Crais goes on automatic pilot
Review: I recognize that it's tough to keep pumping out "fresh" whodunnit detective novels as part of a lengthy series, so I'll cut Robert Crais some slack here. The book is certainly a quick and engrossing read and there are enough little twists and turns (especially early on in the plot) to keep a reader turning the pages. Crais is a gifted wordsmith and he adds just enough Los Angeles "local color" to provide the novel an interesting sense of place along with its story line.
HOWEVER--there is a fair amount of padding and gimmickry here, including the "troubled but made-in-heaven love relationship" with his lawyer sweetie from Louisiana. This sideshow is not only derivative (reminds me too much of Robert Parker with Spenser's endless rhapsodizing about "Susan"), it really adds virtually nothing to the story.
The plot itself is, as other reviewers have pointed out, essentially O.J. warmed over with a few twists. Consequently, Crais has this time around taken the easy way out in crafting this novel through creation of a one-dimensionally "slimy bad guy" criminal defended by a "Green Machine" of Evil Rich Guy Svengali-like attorneys. Because of this, the essential plot line becomes discernible and predictable from a very early stage of the book; the rest is just filling in the paint-by-numbers.
Moreover, I found Crais' editorial slant on all things Los Angeles to be irritatingly self-righteous and to my mind, unjustified, i.e., that wealthy liberal Hollywood celebrity types are invariably hypocritical and degenerate, that accusations that the Los Angeles police might, in fact, tend toward racism and procedural sloppiness are all merely rhetorical, etc. And the ending, aimed at evoking a fist-pumping "Yessss!!" from the attorney-hating reader, is just plain hokey.
Crais remains an above-average crime novelist possessed of a distinctive enough voice to render his books worth perusing when one is in the mood for a quick, literary-junk-food type read. However, by this, his sixth Elvis Cole novel there has developed a formulaic, predictable quality to his work that leads me to wonder whether I'll bother to get to the subsequent volumes in this series.
Rating:
Summary: In Every Detective Series, Some Are Better Than Others...
Review: I've read all but two of the Elvis Cole series and it's generally good throughout. This one was a little disappointing. For series fans, a lot more of Joe Pike's history with LAPD detective Angela Rossi could have been added here, and I think it would have fleshed him out a little. (We had to wait for LA Requiem for that.) There are a few geographic flaws which I found disconcerting as an Angeleno...San Pedro is not sixty miles from LA, maybe more like 16, which is a little like saying Brooklyn is twenty miles from Manhattan. The interplay with the Louisiana girlfriend lends a subplot which series fans will probably appreciate, but I can see where a casual reader might not get it. But I occasionally found myself thinking that this book seemed like it was written in a hurry, or didn't have the full interest of the author. Not up to the usual standard, which is pretty good. I'd recommend starting with The Monkey's Raincoat first - this is best as part of the series, not as good read independently IMHO. Better than many other mysteries rated at three stars in Amazon, just less desirable in comparison to the rest of the Elvis Cole series.
Rating:
Summary: Elvis Woos Lucy in L.A.
Review: 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. 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 Sunset Express, the sixth book in the series. The title refers life in the fast lane of the Southern California rich and famous. The book opens with a fast-moving prologue in which a murder victim is found in the hills just off Mulholland Drive overlooking L.A., the police follow up, and the murder weapon used to kill Susan Martin is found near her home. The husband looks to be good for the crime. But he's Teddy Martin, celebrity restauranteur to the stars. That's a problem. As Detective Sergeant Dan "Tommy" Tomsic observes, "It's easier to cut off your own . . . leg than convict a rich man in this state, detective." Elvis is hired by Martin's legendary defense attorney, Jonathan Green, to check out whether one of the detectives, Angela Rossi, may have planted the murder weapon at the Martin home. She checks out clean, and then Elvis is given suspect leads to follow up. One of the leads quickly turns up two dead suspects. Suddenly, Green and his associates are spending more time smearing Ms. Rossi and manipulating the press than they are finding the guilty parties. What gives? Angered, Elvis quits and looks to right the wrong. Unless you've been away on another planet for the last 20 years, you will notice some parallels to the OJ Simpson case. The plot is quite inventive in working out the details in another way, however. In fact, this story is very much in the John Grisham school of dirty lawyer tales. There's not much mystery here, but a lot of good plot and character development. I graded the book down for insufficient mystery. In this story, it's Lucy who becomes a more complex and interesting character. The main appeal of this book to me was Elvis sandwiching in a visit from Lucy Chenier, the Louisiana lawyer from Voodoo River, and her son, Ben. It made Elvis more real and appealing as a character. This book is structured like a short story (the initial crime investigation) and three connected novellas (Elvis working for the lawyers, Elvis entertaining Lucy and Ben, and Elvis working against the lawyers). After you finish the book, I suggest that you think about the dangers inherent in our society's cult of celebrities. Where could you improve your life by paying more attention to sound values than to what is popular on television? Donald Mitchell
Co-author of The 2,000 Percent Solution, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage
Rating:
Summary: Compelling Read
Review: Obviously based on OJ, and it will definitely make you look at his Dream Team differently. Crais has created wonderful characters in Elvis Cole, Joe Pike and the cat. I wish there was more cat in his books. The girl's okay. A little mediocre for someone like Elvis to be gaga over, though.
Rating:
Summary: Tough, clear cut plot
Review: Private detective Elvis Cole, is hired by a high profile, media savvy lawyer, Jonathan Green, as a special investigator in the murder case of the wife of a famous restuateur, Teddy Martin. Detective Angela Rossi, a career policewoman with ambitions of becoming the first woman Chief of detectives, has been accused of planting incriminating evidence against Martin to further her own career.When Elvis realises that he is being set up to blur the evidence, he quits but continues to work on the case with the police. This is a pacy, smart story with just enough humour to leaven out the violence.
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