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A Dangerous Man demonstrates why Crais is a master
Book Review
By Derryll White
Crais, Robert (2019). A Dangerous Man.
“If you’re looking for trouble
just look right in my face.”
-Elvis Presley, “King Creole”
Robert Crais has written more than 20 modern crime fiction novels. He is a master in this field and ‘A Dangerous Man’ demonstrates why. Joe Pike and Elvis Cole take the reader meticulously through the investigative procedures. Crais starts before the actual crime is committed, establishing background. Then he moves into the act itself, bringing first Joe and then Elvis into the picture.
Robert Crais has some fun in this novel, raising the spectre of “what if?’ Do you remember when you were a kid – what if I’m adopted? Or later if life – what if I had married that girl? What if I could steal millions of dollars and get away with it? That is kind of what Isabel Roland gets stuck with – what if I had been told the real story?
Crais looks at police corruption, witness protection programmes and the timbre and texture of Los Angeles. The novel is a fast action read that doesn’t surrender the reader until the very end.
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Excerpts from the novel:
U.S. MARSHALS – They marched him into Hollywood Station like they owned the place, Gregg and a herd of U.S. Marshals. The watch commander led them to a conference room. It was one of the nice conference rooms with a big-screen monitor, a large shiny table, and clean chairs. The Marshals had juice.
LOS ANGELES – They were having dinner at a storefront restaurant in Koreatown, just off Olympic Boulevard. The K-town restaurant, located in a faded brick building with exhaust-stained awnings, looked shabby from the street, but online food groupies and L.A.’s best restaurant critics had raved about the place. Now, halfway through a meal of three-way duck, eel with knife-cut noodles, pork bossam, and bone broth with organ meats, Riley agreed with the five-star reviews.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
