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Chasing Darkness (Hardcover)

by Robert Crais (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Chasing Darkness + The Watchman + Indigo Slam (Elvis Cole Novels)
Price For All Three: £17.60

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Orion; First Edition edition (8 Jul 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0752891596
  • ISBN-13: 978-0752891590
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 180,318 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #20 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > C > Crais, Robert

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Product Description

Review

'In Los Angeles, a city not entirely devoid of fictional private eye, Robert Crais' combative, edgy Elvis Cole continues to be up there with the best of them. Chasing Darkness is his twelfth appearance and among his best... the climax and denouement are terrific.' (TIMES )

'A dark introspective thriller... Fast action, false clues make a gripping if cheerless read' (LITERARY REVIEW )

'Crais is in top form in Chasing Darkness, It's a first-rate puzzle, with many twists and nothing quite as it seems.' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'Crais is certainly the master at producing a good read.' (SHORTLIST - Summer Reading List )

'Fast, full of twists' (EVENING STANDARD )

'Crais's typically deft' (SUNDAY TIMES )

'Fast and intricately plotted, this is one of the summer's better reads.' (IRISH INDEPENDENT )

'From the first page you know you're in good hands... Buckle up for a thrilling ride.' (PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH )


Product Description

It is fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. Fire Department personnel rush to evacuate the inhabitants, and find the days-old corpse of a middle-aged recluse who apparently committed suicide. Clutched in his lap is a photo album containing photographs of seven young women who have been murdered, each photograph was taken only moments after the women were killed. One murder per year for seven years, their bodies found in different parts of the city. LAPD homicide detectives had never connected the seven murders. But now with the discovery of the "death album" these seven murders have been linked, and the news for Elvis Cole is bad... Only one suspect had been charged in any of those cases, that being for the murder of victim #4. LAPD and the LA County District Attorney had a recorded confession by the suspect and believed him to be the murderer. But, with evidence supplied by Elvis Cole, in the end he walked free. That suspect was the suicide now discovered in the fire, Elliot Martin. Did Cole's action three years ago free a killer to commit more murders? Did Elvis cost three young women their lives?
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Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Another Tour de Force - Great Thriller Writing, 8 Jul 2008
By J. E. Parry "Jeff Parry" (Pontypool, Wales) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
What can I say? This is another great Robert Crais book, he just gets better as time goes by. It is also not as dark of the last few Cole/Pike books have been and deals more with a new case than what has happened in their lives previously.

Here we see them investigating the death of a serial killer. The problem is that Cole had cleared him of one of the murders 3 years before. The LAPD are blaming him for the following deaths but he maintains his intial findings were correct.

As he looks for answers things just get more and more complicated and people who could help are being killed. Paperwork goes missing from police files and, after declaring that the killer is dead, the LAPD seem to be investigating something and not telling anyone, including those in the force.

We have returned to a more care-free Cole with references made to his quirky side - the Mickey Mouse phone and Pinnochio clock making welcome returns. We also see more of his sarcastic wit materialising.

Pike is Pike. The supreme figure of primtive manhood that is always there, not letting anything ruffle him but gazing impassively at events that go on around him.

I really wish that we could have more than one book a year. That 12 month wait between books is very difficult. Yet I never want him to descend to Patterson thinness and poor quality. This year I've even rationed myself to stop me reading the entire book in a day.

Buy it and see what you may have missed.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Elvis is Alive and Well!, 6 Aug 2008
By G. J. Oxley "Gaz" (Tyne & Wear, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Deeply impressive, 28 Jul 2008
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Chasing Darkness
I love everything that I have read so far of Robert Crais. Just hope he keeps on writing!
Published 3 months ago by Mrs. C. E. Pegler

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing !

Chasing Darkness was disappointing and certainly not worth waiting
for. It lacked depth to the characters and the story-line was predictable. Read more
Published 4 months ago by lynden

5.0 out of 5 stars chasing darkness
Its only a short time since I discovered Robert Crais and his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels,I've been devouring them ever since. Read more
Published 4 months ago by P. A. Jackson

5.0 out of 5 stars crime writers
When you read all the books by a favourite author you have to look for others.Try Jack Kerley and Cody McFadyen. You wont be disappointed!Chasing Darkness
Published 7 months ago by Mrs. Am Mcwhirter

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the best but still much better than the average
Would agree with previous reviewers - 4/5 rather than a straight 5. It is more like the earlier Elvis Cole book in being slightly light and more flippant in the writing style... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Lucky Luke

5.0 out of 5 stars Cannot wait for next novel
I ran out of Michael Connelly and Lee Child novels to read, which is how I came upon the Elvis Cole novels. Read more
Published 14 months ago by POB

5.0 out of 5 stars can't wait for the next one....
Missed Joe Pike...but loved the book. Will be first in line when the next one comes out.
Published 14 months ago by holly

4.0 out of 5 stars My first Cole novel - thoroughly enjoyed it.
I would not have dreamed of picking up this book ordinarily but it got reviewed on 5 Live whilst I happened to be tuned in and it included an interview with Robert Crais who came... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Rich

3.0 out of 5 stars A Strong Opening Fades into the End

Stephen King teaches novelists to think of an unusual situation to start the book and then let the book write itself from there. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Professor Donald Mitchell

3.0 out of 5 stars A Strong Opening Fades into the End

Stephen King teaches novelists to think of an unusual situation to start the book and then let the book write itself from there. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Professor Donald Mitchell

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