Receive Your Copy Lullaby Town (Elvis Cole, #3) Articulated By Robert Crais Offered In Printable Format

SO happy I dont have to put this series aside!

First, a very big “like” to the amazing narrator Mel Foster.
What an amazing job he did here, making me want to listen to more books from him.


After not finishing the first book in the series, I decided to give the third book in the series a go, on account of it being higher rated, and.
. . it was a huge success for me!

I did not connect to Cole in bookthe narrator wasnt bad at all, but I wonder if it was narrated by Foster, maybe I would have liked it more but god, did I love him and his sense of humor in this one!

I will now go back to bookThe World's Greatest Detective, Elvis Cole, gets hired by the world's third most famous movie director, Peter Alan Nelson, to locate his exwife and son whom he lost contact with when the son was just a baby more than ten years ago.
Nelson is a worldclass narcissist that the movie studios just can't say no to, because he makes so much money for them with his adventure films.
He always travels with an entourage and every sentence, every thought begins and ends with "I, "

Finding the exwife and son proves to be easy enough for the World's Greatest Detective, even though she has changed her name and tried to obliterate any trace of her relationship with Nelson.
She's living in a small town in Connecticut where she has forged a good life for herself and her son.
She's the manager of the local bank and a realtor, Unfortunately, her position at the bank has put her in the clutches of a local gangster and mafiatype, who is forcing her to help launder his illgotten gains.
She is caught and can't get free,

When he talks to her, Elvis learns that she doesn't want any part of her egotistical exhusband or his money.
She has never told her son who his father is, What she does want is to get free of the mafia and to be able to continue to live the quiet, normal life of a small town businesswoman and mother.
The World's Greatest Detective offers to help her make that happen,

But in order to accomplish that, of course, Elvis has to call in the big guns i.
e, his partner, Joe Pike, Once Pike is in town, they formulate a plan to try to dislodge that unmovable object, the mafia.
Then, Peter Alan Nelson shows up and throws a monkey wrench into the works,

This was the third in Robert Crais' Elvis Cole series and it seems to be a bit of a turning point.
The first two books featured Elvis making one wisecrack after another, His response to any and every situation was the sarcastic retort, This one showed Elvis being somewhat more serious, The humor was still evident but it was toned down a bit, That was an improvement, in my opinion, Snark is perfectly fine in small doses, but a little goes a long way, especially when the character is dealing with life or death situations.


The story takes several twists and turns before building toward the final shootout which seems to be
the trademark of a Crais thriller.
I lost track of the body count, but all except one were bad guys mostly very bad guys and the reader is not unhappy to see them go.


These stories have been compared, both favorably and unfavorably, to Robert B, Parker's Spenser series. They also remind me somewhat of Lee Child's Reacher series, Elvis isn't quite the lone rolling stone that Reacher is, but their military backgrounds and personalities have similarities.


Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are an interesting duo, always on the side of the angels.
I find it fascinating that no matter how many bad guys they whack, they never get arrested or asked too many embarrassing questions about the carnage.
I guess the angels must be on their side, too,
Okay, THIS is more like it! The setting, plot, writing and characters all seemed to finally gel for me with this series and I had a blast with this one.
Elvis only gets more and more likable and Pike only gets more and more badass, A quick aside about Pike, I really dont get the hate he gets sometimes, The characters whole charm is that you dont ever know whats going on in the dudes head other than hes Coles buddy to the death and will put a motherfucker on ice with the greatest of ease.
What else do you need Angst That would only ruin the fun of these books, I did find it funny that even Cole has no idea as to how Pike can see in the dark with his everpresent sunglasses on.
Onward to more Cole/Pike goodness with Free Fall! Wow, . so disappointing. My first Robert Crais book, and Im not sure if I will read another, The plot/story and character development were so thin and weak, Surely, Robert Crais improved in his subsequent books The dialogue was so contrived and cheesy, Harsh review, but Im a little spoiled by the masterful writing and storytelling of John Sandford and Michael Connelly.
Ok, a few rambling thoughts on Robert Crais, Who is this guy, where'd he come from, how'd he get so popular Well the first thing to know is that Crais is not from California at all.
He is a native of Louisiana, grew up in a blue collar family, and read his first crime novel sitelinkThe Little Sister when he was.
And that's all it took, Chandler gave him his love for writing, Other authors that have inspired him were Hammett, Hemingway seems like that's true of all the crime writers, Parker, and Steinbeck huh.


How'd he get so popular In short: television and sitelinkL, A. Requim. Robert Crais has a very impressive resume as a screenwriter for such television series as Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice damn, I loved that show too!, Cagney amp Lacey.
But what hits home the most with Crais himself is his work on thehour mini series Cross of Fire which is about the Ku Klux Klan and is probably more relevant to his home state of Louisiana than it is to Hollywood.
Following a growing dissatsifaction of a screen writer's constraints, Crais began writing novels, L. A. Requim, which is theth Elvis Cole novel, is what landed him as an author that defied all genres and in it outsurpassed even the legendary Ross Macdonald.


Enough about Crais, the guy's good, So, what about Elvis Cole Naming someone Elvis had to have been a fairly deliberate decision, To me the name seems iconic, Warholish, Disneylandish, a bit theatrical if not cynical, In fact his novels and trinkets therein are suffused with cultural icons: Spider Man mug, Jiminy Cricket latent fantasy of wanting to be Peter Pan, and his yellow Corvette.
Even his slogan seems hamstrung with Hollywood's obsession with icons: Elvis Cole is The world's Greatest Detective! But in reality there's nothing ridiculous about Cole: he's tough, honest, ponders morality and ambiguity and hypocrasies while staring out the balcony window in his office.
Yes, he's cynical, a smart ass, a comic relief in many ways, . . but behind the seeming humor lies a Dan Wesson,, the Vietnam War, martial arts and his biggest gun of all: Joe Pike,

Joe Pike, the avenging angel, is a tool used sparingly by Crais, Use him too much and you wonder why he isn't the main character we know Crais has struggled with this as he produced sitelinkseparate novels featuring Pike as the hero use him too little and you start wondering why the big guns aren't being pulled out by Elvis.
What you want to do is increase the anxiety level of the reader towards the hero, not get the reader frustrated with him.
Crais handles this expertly and uses Pike to increase the anticipation in readers,

The Elvis Cole novels should be considered hard boiled detectives primarily in that Crais deviates from the traditional Romantic tradition found in detective stories and crime fiction by introducing Cole as a detective with a decidedly cynical attitude towards the emotions i.
e. apprehension, horror, terror, and awe such as are found in other crime and thriller stories, And yet, we find sprinkled throughout the books insightful observations of the world as seen through Elvis's eyes.
In the following passage, Elvis observes the effects of dry brush fires raging through L, A. :

Picture the detective at work in his office, fourth floor, Hollywood, as the Devil's Wind freighttrains down from the desert.
Though dry and brutally harsh, the desert wind is clean, It pushes the smog south to the sea and scrubs the sky to a crystalline blue, The air, jittery from the heat,

rises in swaying tendrils like kelp from the seabed, making the city shimmer.
We are never more beautiful than when we are burning,

Like I said, it really came together following the publication of histh Elvis Cole novel.
Pike his side kick, Lou Poitras Cole's detective friend gruffy as ever, shifting view points, a relaxation of Cole's zany character.
. . it all came together following L, A. Requim. So, believe me. All in all, you will not be disappointed with the Elvis Cole series, There are a lot of these novels so sit back and enjoy! I most certainly did,

As with all series reviews, this one covers all the Elvis Cole books, So if you've read this review of mine than you've read 'em all, .