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This formula makes for an exciting read
Book Review
By Derryll White
Crais, Robert (2012). Taken.
‘The World’s Greatest Detective,’ that’s how Elvis Cole is billed at the beginning of the story. However, ‘The World’s Greatest’ anything sometimes needs some help. Robert Crais jumps feet first into the illegal immigrant issue in ‘Taken.’ This is not a large concern in rural B.C. but it is of wide sweeping concern in the U.S. where I.C.E. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) seems to make and play by its own set of rules.
Like all of Robert Crais’ novels, ‘Taken’ reaches out to the reader, well-written, articulate and heart-rending. The author uses a different technique here, sequencing the actions of different characters sometimes in a linear fashion and sometimes a flash back in time. It is a difficult model to use successfully but Crais pulls it off impeccably, never losing the reader in the flow.
The subject matter in ‘Taken’ is not criminal activity that most Canadians are familiar with. Kidnappers working the zone between Mexico and the U.S. are viciously exploiting illegal immigrants, stealing them from the coyotes bringing them into the United States. They then work the families of the captured illegals for all they can squeeze out, then kill the prisoners to avoid identification. This is flat out seize and destroy, just as in any war.
Robert Crais has painstakingly, over time, built the perfect team for this story. Elvis Cole and his inscrutable partner and friend, Joe Pike, operate efficiently outside the bureaucracy of law and order. They are mission efficient. Crais does not make Elvis a superman. But Elvis has a strong will and unbending intent. He is smart, resolute and, most importantly, surrounded by other very strong and capable people whom he trusts. That formula makes for an exciting read.
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Excerpts from the book:
STATUS – I wasn’t an expert on immigration, but anyone living in Southern California becomes conversant with the issue.
TAX EVASION – Though trusts can and did hold title to anything, Mustangs weren’t typically the type of vehicle held in trust. Trusts were used to shelter high-ticket items like yachts, Ferraris and multi-million dollar homes from inheritance taxes.
– 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.
