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| Author: Robert Crais
Publisher: Orion
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £6.99
You Save: £3.00 (30%)
New (24) Used (5) Collectible (2) from £4.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 5075
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0752891596
EAN: 9780752891590
ASIN: 0752891596
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Our friends are back August 13, 2008
I read this book in two sittings, I really liked it. I am of course a big Robert Crais and Elvis Cole fan, I have read them all, and pouncing on any new installment in the series is a must do. Reading the new Elvis Cole adventure is liking having news from a friend who has dropped out of sight for a year. Now to this one: the story is neither worse nor better than previous ones, it has all it takes to make you have a good time. The ending will not smash you up, meaning the book will not go to the firmament of "top 10 best thrillers in history", but it is a very well told tale from a good author, featuring the heroes we like. And that's what I expect from Robert Crais, and that's what he consistently delivers. Again this time. So this one is again recommended. Thanks a lot to Robert !
Elvis is Alive and Well! August 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's refreshing in these days of 400+ page crime thrillers, often padded out beyond their optimum length, to find a nice compact 273 page novel by a major writer.
But then again, Robert Crais is not your average crime novelist. He has the gift of setting a scene within a very short paragraph, and can easily sketch a memorable, living, breathing character in only a few lines. The upshot of this is that he crams an awful lot of plot into a relatively short space and this helps the action move at a cracking pace.
I'll not provide a synopsis - you can see one above, all I'll say is that while `Chasing Darkness' is by no means the best entry in the Cole and Pike series, it's still got plenty of good twists and the reader simply speeds through it. The prose is, as always, lean and spare and contains no excess wordage anywhere. This is the mark of all great American crime writers, and Crais is up there with all but the very, very best.
My one criticism is that it would have been nice to have had a bit more of Joe Pike in here - but then he did have a whole novel to himself last year with the excellent `The Watchman'. So `Chasing Darkness' is largely Elvis's show as he once again manages to out-think an entire police department and turn up vital information they've overlooked.
Although the murders he's investigating are harrowing and would be really dark in an other's hands, there's still plenty of light and shade. I particularly enjoyed the interplay between Cole and Carol Starkey, a homicide cop who moved from the bomb squad a while back after a long period of physical rehab (I would refer you to `Demolition Angel').
If you're a complete newcomer to Robert Crais, please be assured that you can read this without having caught the preceding books in the series. All you need to know is that Elvis is a private detective operating in LA. He has a wisecracking style (as do ALL private dicks! - but don't let that put you off!), a taciturn, hard-as-nails ex-marine sidekick named Joe Pike, and his office has a Mickey Mouse phone... oh, and the office tends to get trashed quite a lot!
All in all this was a very enjoyable read and is recommended to anyone who likes a good crime thriller
 Well Constructed as always but DULL!!! August 5, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
A man who Elvis Cole helped acquit of a murder charge three years previously is found dead with a photo album on his lap showing seven murder victims including the one Elvis helped him get off.Cole smells LAPD cover up and needless to say starts digging.
As a previous reviewer mentioned just how do you top the utterly superb L A Requiem(which along with Dennis Lehane's"Gone Baby Gone",James Lee Burke's"The Neon Rain",George Pelecanos'"A Firing Offense" and James Ellroy's "L A Confidential"constitute the best American crime novels of the last 25 years)?
Answer is you can't. Requiem was perfect in almost every regard and the only crime novel that has ever left a lump in my throat such was it's impact."Chasing the Darkness" does not even try to come close.The story is perfunctory and if you discount police cover up the "killer"is ridiculously easy to guess.But worst of all is the sidelining of Pike.Other reviewers have been a bit cute about this(and way over generous in their praise of this book)but a character as strong as Pike cannot be marginalised because the story will suffer by his absence.
The blurb suggests "ultraviolence" - one punch up cannot constitute an accurate use of that term."Darkness" can almost be defined by its lack of action.
If you are a completist buy but lower your expectations.It appears that Crais has fallen into the trap that John Connolly and Michael Dibdin did - that of returning to their best series after a hiatus only to write books that belittle the strength of those that had gone before.
I'm off to read L A Requiem again just to remind myself how brilliant Robert Crais once was.
 Not his best August 1, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love these Crais books with Cole and Pike but this one just isn't as good as his others! For a start, there is very little action from Pike, and I suspected the real culprit due to a piece of poor writing by Crais!! (Very unusual for him, I might add!) Great dialogue and characterisations, as usual, but it lacks the 'certain something' of his previous books. Sorry.
Deeply impressive July 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Every one of Robert Crais' novels since 1999's masterful L. A. Requiem (Elvis Cole Novels) has borne the burden of comparison to that book and often been found wanting. Chasing Darkness doesn't match or exceed LAR but - as with The Last Detective and The Two Minute Rule - when he is able to produce work of such high a standard, it seems almost churlish to keep harping on about past glories. Crais is one of the most exciting authors at work today, and we should really celebrate the way in which he has maintained such excellent focus over so many books (incredibly, this is his fifteenth) rather than dwelling on whatever flaws we can find.
For me, Crais is matched only by Michael Robotham for prose, which each book honing his written expression more and more finely, to the extent that desperately complex emotional states and ideas can be reduced to their purest essence in just a few words, which on occasion left my head spinning in amazement. There is no clutter in Chasing Darkness, the book is not one word longer than it needs to be, and for this the man's efficiency is to be admired: stripping away the flashbacks and multiple viewpoints that have characterised his later novels, Crais has made a welcome stylistic return to his earlier books with a smooth, focussed and sleekly-plotted thriller that easily ranks among his most propulsive and compelling. Central to this is the seamless fusion of the Cole and Starkey universes, with the wide supporting cast that Crais had established over the years (viva Eddie Ditko!) effortlessly fusing to form a coherent background for the first time (side note: is anyone else up for another Starkey-centric novel?).
Cole and Pike are old friends by now, and there is something immensely reassuring about slipping back into another story with them. There is, after 11 books with this central pair, a certain amount of peril that we can reasonably expect, but that doesn't stop Crais from exploring the darkness he promises up front in a realistic and occasionally unsettling way - the end of chapter 5, in particular, is a landmark in how Crais uses Cole to explore the darker aspects just below the surface. Also, for what to my mind is a first for Crais, there are questions deliberately left hanging at the end, the author purposely not reaching to conveniently explain everything away, which - in its incompleteness - actually makes the book more rounded and enjoyable. Congratulations, Mr. Crais, we're still hungry for more!
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