Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Review: "The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel" by Robert Crais

Elvis Cole has taken quite a few strange cases over the years and the latest is going to be another one. Amy Breslyn is missing. A senior executive at Woodson Energy Solutions, Meryl Lawrence, wants Amy found fast and very quietly. The company manufactures fuels for the Department of Defense and Amy
worked there. Beyond the obvious national security problem with a high level employee disappearing there are other issues.

Amy disappeared, $450,000 is now missing from Amy’s department, and Meryl believes that Amy is being coerced. Meryl wants nobody to know that she hired the “world’s greatest detective” so she paid cash and gave Elvis the bare minimum to get started. He can’t see Amy’s  office or have access to her e-mail or know anything about her work. He knows very little. One of the things he does know includes the fact that Amy’s son, Jacob, died sixteen months ago in a terrorist attack overseas. She also gave him one possible lead which has led Elvis Cole to a house in Echo Park one rainy night.

A lead that is going to result in the involvement of multiple members of the Los Angeles Police Department including K-9 Officer Scott James and his German shepherd, Maggie, a dead bod,  and enough explosives to destroy quite an area. Things are just getting started in The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel by Robert Crais.

This latest in the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series is a good one though Pike is regulated to a very small supporting role for most of the book and is not around that much. Told from the point of view of the bad guys, Elvis Cole, Scott James, Maggie, and many others, the read moves through character’s heads as they all pursue their various agendas. That results in some overlap of situations as action sequences and case details are depicted first one way than the other.

This is an action oriented book-- almost thriller like in its lack of character depth-- as the primary few  characters have been fleshed out long before. The only characters that go into any real depth at all are Maggie and her canine handler Scott James. Therefore, it will be helpful to read the preceding book, Suspect, which introduced these two characters as parts of that backstory are referenced here.

The Promise  is a read that powers steadily forward with a focus on action and little else. It is not a normal Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike book as one expects quite a bit more character depth, humor, and meat to the storylines without all the various cardboard cutout characters. Those issues have led some to question whether or not this book was written by the author. It seems clear that it was as it follows the same style and tone as Suspect did. While The Promise is not a book of any depth, it is entertaining and a very fast read. 


The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel
Robert Crais
Wheeler Publishing (Gale, Cengage Learning)
November 2015
ISBN# 978-4104-6672-3
Large Print Hardback (standard hardback, audio, and e-book formats are available)
525 Pages
$37.99


Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Texas Library System.


Kevin R. Tipple ©2016

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