Tuesday, March 20, 2018

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

Devon Connor knows her son, Tyson, is up to something. She thinks that her son is involved with drug dealers in some way as she has found money and more in his room including a Rolex. She wants private detective Elvis Cole to find out what her son is doing.

It does not take the world’s greatest detective long to figure out that Tyson, as well as his girlfriend,  Amber, and another teen, Alec, are actually involved in burglaries. They have been taking expensive stuff from various houses. For the teens it is a rush and a game. For somebody they stole from it was very personal and that party has the resources to have them found, the property recovered, and the thieves dealt with in a very permanent way.

Until that happens, the two man hit team hired to find the stolen item will stack bodies in their hunt. It isn’t long before Elvis and the killers cross paths and the chaos begins to build.  Good thing Cole has Pike to balance the odds a little bit.

The Wanted by Robert Crais is a fast paced thrill ride from start to finish. The read shifts nearly every chapter to a different character or characters as the chase winds across the Los Angeles area. What was taken and what it means is at the heart of a story where almost all the bad guys are identified from the start. Instead, the point of the read is building suspense as Elvis and Pike try to keep the clients alive and figure out what they want back and more.

While The Wanted is the latest in the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series, it can easily be read as a standalone. There are hardly any backstory references in the book so reading this one first for readers new to the series would not be a hindrance. Readers of the series to this point should understand that while the tale is a good one, there is less meat on the bones here in terms of other characters being developed. For the most part, the secondary characters tend to be stock characters and at times a bit clichéd. The Wanted is one of those books that you read that is written in such a way that would be easy for Hollywood to make a movie.

Despite all of that, for what it is, The Wanted by Robert Crais is a pretty good read. It keeps the action moving forward at a strong pace and author Robert Crais does a good job of escalating things as needed. While not nearly as good as earlier books in the series, it is a good read and worth your time.


The Wanted: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel
Robert Crais
G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Random House LLC)
December 2017
ISBN# 978-0-399-16150-6
Hardback (also available in audio and eBook formats)
332 Pages
$28.00


Material supplied by the good people of the Dallas Library System. Support your local libraries. When the zombies attack and the grid goes down, all those internet connected devices are not going to be worth crap. We will need printed books to rebuild the world.



Kevin R. Tipple ©2018

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