The Watchman

This was the first Elvis Cole "series" I have read and I am hooked. Now starting with Monkey's Raincoat, I look forward to reading all the Cole novels. There seem to be a number of anti-hero sidekicks to todays PI's. Spenser has Hawk, Patrick Kenzie has Bubby for example. The character Joe Pike most reminds me of is a spitting image of Lee Child's Jack Reacher. Brutal, quiet loners. But for some reason, Pike seems a bit more human, a bit more flawed. I hope Crais writes using him as the lead in future books. If you like hard action novels- this is the book for you. I was excited to find a new series to read. Now if only Dennis Lehane can release a new Kenzie/Gennaro novel.

Robert Crais' THE WATCHMAN receives Chicago actor James Daniels' smooth and vivid narrative style as it tells of one Larkin Barkley, who is young, rich, and the sole witness to a secret federal investigation in the aftermath of a terrible accident. Her life is changed and it's up to ex-cop Joe Pike to protect her.

Around page 100, I would have rated this just 3-4 stars. It ends up as a firm 5 by the end. There seem to me to be two distinct strands in thriller writing -- character builders and plot artists. Crais is more of a plotter than a character guy; I never quite get inside his two heroes, Pike and Cole -- they seem just a little artificial. But he is superb in plotting. What begins as a routine story line weaves, turns, double backs and grabs you to the last pages. He is a good stylist -- deft, brief and precise. He is also superb in his portrayals of violence and cruelty; you get a sense here of Pike's dissociation and his own detachment. The heroine -- Paris Hilton but without the intellect -- does not come alive for me; again, too artificial. The villains are shadows not realities. But, this is a minor point. The book works superbly. I loved it.

Joe Pike is the epitome of crime tough guys. Nobody does it better. He was a special forces soldier before he became an LAPD cop. He took the fall on charges that shouldn't have been dropped on him and was busted out of the LAPD. He became a mercenary and a some-time private eye that paired up with the World's Greatest Detective, Elvis Cole. He has red arrows pointing forward tattooed on his deltoids because Joe Pike does not back up. This is the guy I've been waiting years to read about. Author Robert Crais introduced one of the funniest and emotionally complex private detectives to come along in years in Elvis Cole, but he also crafted one of the hardest heroes to see print in decades. Joe Pike is the king of cool, the master of the understatement, and a man haunted by personal demons he'll never talk about. Hired by a friend of a friend, Joe agrees to bodyguard Larkin Barkley, a young woman who's the daughter of a multi-millionaire businessman. Larkin has a self-destructive tendency that only Joe seems to understand. Unfortunately, some of the same things she's in denial about are the same things that plague Joe. As the two fight to stay alive, and fight with each other, they come to realize that the only way they're going to get through the situation alive is to rely on and trust each other. Both of them have issues with that. Larkin is a witness in a brutal slaying. The murderer is believed to be a brutal head of a drug cartel who will stop at nothing to kill Larkin. The book starts off with a bang, with bullets ripping through the air and Pike's truck from the first pages to the close of the book. The novel grabs the reader by the throat and literally demands the reader's full attention. The assault on the reader's senses is relentless. Crais is an elaborate plotter, but it all makes sense when he shakes out the final twist. But the best thing of all is getting to ride shotgun with Joe Pike while he deals with enemy guns and the hostile past he has that keeps getting in the way while he's protecting Larkin. The dialogue, the descriptions, and the pacing are so well choreographed that you can see the movie spinning in your head. I liked the cameos that Elvis Cole had in this novel, but I'm glad Joe got to keep center stage. I really didn't think the novel would work that well because sometimes if a writer shines a light too brightly on an enigmatic hero that everything that existed is turned into a cheap trick. But Joe Pike is for real. He's an unstoppable force and an avenging angel all rolled into one. The publishers mention that this is a JOE PIKE NOVEL right on the cover. Hopefully there will be future installments. If so, they'd be most welcome.